Felician University has NGO status at the United Nations, and this evening I’ll be serving as the University’s representative to the UN at a screening of David Holbrooke’s new film, “The Diplomat,” a documentary on the life of his father, Richard Holbrooke (1941-2010). The screening begins with introductory remarks by Samantha Power, followed by a discussion moderated by David Holbrooke.
There’s an odd sense for me of the “road not taken” about this event, since I think I may well be one of the few philosophers there among all the diplomats. When I first went to college, I’d planned on joining the U.S. Foreign Service, majoring in Politics and minoring in Near East Studies. But I got distracted by philosophy in my junior year, and ended up (very hesitantly) applying to graduate school in philosophy my senior year–getting in to precisely one graduate program (Notre Dame), which I ended up attending.
Most days, I think it was the right decision, but some days I wonder about it (cf. Nicomachean Ethics X.7-8: not exactly a new “dilemma”). I can’t say that I’ve never looked back, but obviously, I haven’t gone back. Still, it’s a strange feeling to hang out with the club I once might have joined (or tried to join) while fleeing for another one.
December 9, 2015: The film screened in the UN’s Trusteeship Council Chamber to about 300 or so people, most of them (as far as I could make out) diplomats of one sort or another. Samantha Power had some interesting things to say, as did David Holbrooke, and Christina Gallach, the UN’s Undersecretary-General for Communications and Public Information.
I probably couldn’t summarize the film any better than Neil Genzlinger in The New York Times and Todd Purdum in Vanity Fair; I also happen to agree with both reviewers’ positive assessments. It’s a great film, but hard to access: unless you get to a screening, you’ll have to watch it via HBO Now, HBO Go, or HBO On Demand. But I’d highly recommend doing so, if only as an antidote to the venomous muck that constitutes the contemporary American political scene. I’ll have some comments on some of the broader philosophical and political implications of the film “soon.” (In PoT parlance, “soon” means “possibly within a year.”)
Just got back from the Hummus Summit with Curtis Sliwa this afternoon in Paterson. I’m pressed for time, as usual, so no time to write it up. For now, I’ll just post a few pictures (and silly captions), and write up a post later in the week.
Hey, what a town:
Oh wait, is there a double entendre here?
Curtis Sliwa and Noam Laden in Al Basha Restaurant.
A chance meeting on Main Street outside of the restaurant:
More later. And now, back to my day job as…what am I again, an assistant professor of something somewhere?
Postscript, December 7, 2015: Here’s coverage of the event in today’s Bergen Record. For obvious reasons, only bits and pieces of a wide-ranging two hour interview made it into the article.
Postscript, December 11, 2015: Now that I have a minute, I thought I’d comment on the significance of this event, over and above the opportunity to meet a celebrity and eat lunch at his expense (not that that’s trivial).
At one level, it was an opportunity for a show of solidarity: Curtis Sliwa and I make for unlikely collaborators, but the fact is that we agree on the celebration rumors. Contrary to the blanket rejections that we heard from Paterson city officials when we were investigating the celebration rumors, we both found credible evidence of a celebration-like disturbance in Paterson on 9/11. Contrary to Donald Trump’s defenders and Islamophobes across the land, neither of us found more than that, and neither of us have found the further stories that have been bruited about as plausible. (I’ll have more to say about those “further stories” in a separate post.)
I don’t know if Sliwa would agree, but I would add that the evidence we did collect was not itself definitive, either about the occurrence of an event, or about its celebratory nature. I regard it as likely that some such event took place, but I wouldn’t insist that it did, much less spread rumors (a la Fred Siegel) that small-scale celebrations were definitely occurring throughout the area. (I’ll have more to say about Siegel’s comments on MSNBC in a separate post. For now, I’ll simply note that in a week’s time, he hasn’t acknowledged an email I sent him care of the Manhattan Institute, asking for clarification of his references to me on Joe Scarborough’s show.)
At another level, the event was an opportunity to set the record straight. Trump used Sliwa’s name to spread his, Trump’s, lies. Fred Siegel has used my name to spread his, Siegel’s, confabulations. Sliwa said that there was a small disturbance in Paterson on 9/11; Trump used that to claim vindication for his own bullshit. I said that it was likely that there was a small disturbance in front of the public library in Paterson, and said in print that it was likely that a dozen or less were involved; Siegel has used that to claim that there were “demonstrations” (“a couple of dozen people at most”). I don’t know any better way of calling out bullshitters except to keep calling them out for their bullshit. In that respect, the Hummus Summit could well have been named The Anti-Bullshit Summit, except that that name probably wouldn’t have gone well with lunch.
At a third level, the event was a demonstration of the malign power of rumor. Noam Laden, the other invitee to the Summit, described how he had bought the Paterson celebration rumor hook, line, and sinker for fourteen years, inferring that Paterson would be unsafe for Jews (he’s Jewish) given what the rumor implied about the sensibilities of those who live there. Though he lives in Jersey City (an irony of its own), he hadn’t set foot in Paterson since before 9/11 for fear of having to deal with a neighborhood full of terrorist sympathizers. The result was that he stopped eating at one of his favorite restaurants and shunned Paterson until he was convinced by Sliwa to attend the Summit there. I give Laden credit for admitting all that, and for reversing his earlier views.
Incidentally, Laden told us that his brother’s name is Ben, and that in the wake of 9/11, his brother had endured a fair bit of serious, non-joke-intending harrassment for having the name “Ben Laden.” I know I overuse the line, but this story forces me to repeat it: is there any final answer to the question, “How stupid can you get?”
Though we didn’t happen to discuss the point at the Summit, I suspect that Noam Laden’s worries about Paterson were exacerbated by the Paterson Protocols controversy of 2002, in which I also happened to play a cameo role. The story was originally broken by Daniel Pipes, receiving widespread coverage at the time not just in the mainstream press, but in Marc Levin’s 2005-2006 documentary film “Protocols of Zion.” I think the 9/11 celebration rumors are best understood in the light of this later controversy; it’s the later controversy that retrospectively gives the rumors the apparent plausibility that they seem to have. (I have yet to collect all of my Paterson writings and all of my writing on Muslim anti-Semitism in one place, but I probably should.)
Sad but true: North Jersey suburbanites treat north Jersey’s cities in the way that non-Arab Israelis treat the West Bank or Gaza. As far as they’re concerned, Jersey’s cities are scary, crime-ridden “no-go zones” where civilized people fear to tread. Mention “Newark,” “Paterson,” or “Jersey City” to the average north Jersey suburbanite, and with remarkable frequency you’ll get the response, “Oh, I don’t go there.” Unsurprisingly, the suburbs are a semi-gated, exclusively zoned echo chamber of genteel racial and class-based stereotypes. (In fairness, I should probably say that a person might legitimately want to avoid driving to Jersey City given the misery involved in getting there: driving into Jersey City during rush hour is not altogether different from driving into Jerusalem from Ramallah via Qalandia Checkpoint.)
These attitudes seem to be an artifact of the 1980s and 90s, when crime rates soared, and city streets were indeed unsafe to walk. But that was decades ago. It doesn’t seem to matter that crime rates have recently fallen to record lows. The fact remains that our cities are still alien territory. It shouldn’t be a surprise, then, that rumors flourish about them. That’s what rumors are for: they speak the otherwise unspeakable about the irredeemably alien, and north Jersey’s urbanites are apparently as alien to its suburbanites as literal aliens might be to earthlings. The lesson here seems to be that for all of the cosmopolitan pretensions of the New York metro area, we don’t seem to get out much.
One wonders how a country is supposed to hold itself together when its citizens are so alienated by and from the people who live a couple of neighborhoods away that they instinctively shun them on the basis of the wildest rumors about them. A house divided….?
*As a Jersey City resident, Laden is not a suburbanite, so the point I’m making here is not about him. My point is that his story draws attention to the phenomenon I’m describing, not that he himself exemplifies it.
I’m writing this between performances of Felician Live, but just a little note to say that I’ve accepted Curtis Sliwa’s invitation to appear at his Hummus Summit at noon tomorrow at Al Basha Restaurant in notorious Paterson, New Jersey. I’m honored to be invited, it’s in a good cause, and I’m not one to decline a meal (or even a bit of hummus) at Al Basha. Looking forward to it and will definitely blog it when my schedule returns to sanity. More later.
Fox News host Eric Bolling emerged Tuesday as one of the few media voices to support Trump.
“I remember specifically the news reports about Jersey City,” Bolling said. “They said people were on the roofs watching the planes fly in. They were tipped off prior to the thing, and this was a narrative that was going on. I remember video. I don’t remember if it was Pakistan or Paterson.”
Pakistan, Paterson: what’s the difference? And what difference does it make that neither place is Jersey City? (Or that he’s probably confusing Pakistan with Palestine, and Palestine with East Jerusalem?) Contrary to the blog’s suggestions, what the item really proves is that there is no final answer to the question, “How stupid can you get?”
As for the “proof” itself, it’s worse than a joke. I’ve been away from things for a bit, but when I get the chance (hopefully mid-week) I’ll try to comment on the Pablo Guzman video mentioned here as well as the Giuliani-Kerik testimony and other interesting odds and ends on the celebration rumors that I’ve recently seen (or will end up seeing between now and then).
I made The New York Times today. Kind of ironic. I subscribe to the Times, but my delivery guy failed to deliver my paper today. I guess I link to the Times often enough here, so it’s about time they linked to me.
Kind friends tell me that I was mentioned on Fox News last night and MSNBC this morning.* The irony here is that I hate television and haven’t owned one in years, so I didn’t see either segment.
I just met the new Dean of our Business School. A colleague introduced us, and he said, “Oh, so you’re that guy.” I guess I am.
The funny thing is that I’ve been spending most of my time this week rehearsing for this. Just when you thought life couldn’t get any more absurd. For some reason the advertising for the event doesn’t seem to mention that humor is supposed to be involved, but then again, false advertising is illegal.
I have no intention of doing any TV interviews, but my brother has already started giving me advice on how to do them:
For Mom’s sake, wear something nice.
Postscript, 4 pm: Here’s the segment from O’Reilly’s show on Fox. I regard it as essentially solid. Here’s the segment from Scarborough’s show on MSNBC with Fred Siegel. I don’t regard it as solid, but I’m going to reserve comment on the specifics until I have the time to contact Professor Siegel and ask him for some clarifications. (*I’ve revised the original post to reflect the fact that I’d originally said that both segments were on Fox, but one was on MSNBC.)
I have to take a break from Trump and celebration rumors for a few days to get some work done. It’s the end of the semester, and I can’t afford to keep up this pace of blogging right now. So feel free to comment, but don’t expect much in the way of posting or commenting from me until at least next week.
As I’ve said elsewhere, I had a long conversation with Curtis Sliwa in the course of my research on the Paterson celebration rumors. He had gone to Paterson to do street-level interviews before I had done so. He told me what he’d heard, and urged me at the time to follow suit and talk to people on the street. I followed his advice, and ended up essentially re-confirming what he had told me: there was credible testimonial evidence of a disturbance involving 6-12 kids in front of the public library on South Main Street in the mid-morning of 9/11.
This testimony wasn’t air tight. It wasn’t clear that it was true, and it wasn’t clear exactly what it said. It simply indicated that something disturbance-like had taken place on the morning of 9/11 in that area, that it had involved kids, that it had dispersed quickly, and that the event in question had been interpreted as celebratory. Like me, Sliwa dismissed the idea that a large celebration had taken place, but he got flak from the Paterson authorities for claiming that anything at all had happened. The official story emanating from Paterson’s city officials was that nothing of any kind had happened anywhere in Paterson. I spoke with a few city officials, and am skeptical of that categorical rejection. In other words, I basically agree with Sliwa. There may be shades of difference between Sliwa’s view and mine, but on every important issue, I think we agree.
I found it unfortunate that Sliwa wasn’t taken sufficiently seriously at the time. Given his past history of controversy, he wasn’t regarded as a fully credible journalist. I was aware of the past history, but the fact remains that I found him credible, candid, and sincere. We interviewed different people at different times, but the stories they told converged.
He describes me on his Twitter feed as one of his defenders. I’m proud to say that I am, and I’d like to think he’s one of mine. He knows what this fight is about. He was there in the trenches when it mattered, along with the handful of us who chased leads until we were ready to drop, and obsessed about this story when everyone else thought we were crazy. That’s more than can be said of a lot of Johnny-come-lately BS artists who have decided to posture as experts after the fact.
Unsurprisingly, Sliwa is fighting Donald Trump in the same fight for truth and evidence that I regard myself as fighting. Check out his Twitter feed, and you’ll see yet another instance of Trump’s dishonesty at work. I’m completely in Sliwa’s corner on this. It’s not a case of “may the best man win.” As far as I’m concerned, the fight is over, and the winner has already been crowned.
Postscript: Crucial reading on this from MTV News. Sliwa and the reporter, Julianne Ross, are dead-on. It’s Trump who owes Sliwa an apology, not the other way around. Frankly, Trump owes the American people an apology. I would suggest making amends by dropping out of the presidential race and shutting his mouth for awhile.
Here’s a featured letter in today’s New York Times. It describes a view similar to one I held for a long time, but it also presents a major puzzle that any moderate Republican has to resolve.
To the Editor:
Year in and year out, Republicans fail to find the words to convince the public that there is a beating heart at the core of their beliefs. Stereotypes are often inaccurate but they are easy to sell, and Democrats have no trouble flogging their favorite — the callous, unthinking Republican, extremist in view and out for himself.
The facts reveal a softer party profile. According to a Gallup Poll in June, 42 percent of Republicans and Republican-leaning independents consider themselves to be conservative on both social and economic issues, the lowest level since 2005. Another 44 percent are some version of moderate, either on both social and economic issues or just social issues.
And so, quiet moderates are half our number — not the impression we get from the media. Disparaged as RINOS (Republicans in Name Only) by fellow party members further to the right, many now are happy to take on the name. Pro-choice, pro-gun-control and accepting of same-sex marriage, they consider the culture wars peripheral. Their G.O.P.’s first priority is championing private enterprise, the engine that drives the nation, pays its bills, rewards ingenuity and creates jobs.
They have a thoughtful regard for the environment but also care about a form of inequality that Democrats prefer to ignore — that the cost of swapping fossil fuels for renewable energy falls disproportionately on the shoulders of the poor because it slows growth. And so their natural wariness of the accuracy of climate models is prudence, not ignorance.
They know that an infusion of new talent and energy from outside our borders has always been the country’s greatest strength and watch with dismay Donald Trump’s ugly posturing in favor of deporting 11 million immigrants. Most support a sensible plan for amnesty.
They do not feed on anger and resentment. They believe that it is our obligation to look after those in need.
They want to create, not diminish; transform, not long for a mythical past. They are collaborators, not obstructionists.
Greenwich, Conn.
The writer is a longtime registered Republican.
One problem here is that the author is presenting herself as a social liberal and economic conservative while citing figures that say that 42% of Republican-like people are social and economic conservatives. Given the mismatch, the 42% figure doesn’t seem all that meaningful. As for “44% are some kind of moderate,” part of the problem is the vagueness of “moderate,” and part of the problem is that that 44% only seems moderately exercised about the calamity that seems to have befallen the party. They are, to paraphrase Barry Goldwater, moderates about everything, including the defense of truth and the pursuit of justice. That’s why they’re “quiet.” In other words, politically speaking, they’re complacent, apathetic, and ultimately useless.
The boilerplate about “private enterprise” is weak tea. Fringe players aside, we’re all committed to “private enterprise” nowadays. The devil is in the details.
As for the natural wariness of the accuracy of climate models, it would be more impressive if the Republican Party had a genuine commitment to science in the first place. But the Republicans’ “natural wariness of climate models” looks more like a natural wariness of science itself than of climate models in particular.
So here is the puzzle. Suppose that you’re a social liberal broadly in favor of private enterprise. You face serious obstacles within the Republican Party. So why not become a Democrat? The only obstacle would seem to be the widespread belief that the Democrats reject free enterprise. They don’t, really, but even if they did, why is their rejection of free enterprise a bigger obstacle to joining them than the Republicans’ rejection of reality?
Fernando Teson’s opening gambit on a discussion of the two-state solution to the Israel-Palestine dispute:
Almost everyone has by now accepted the two-state solution for the Israeli-Palestinian dispute.
I wasn’t aware of that. Evidence, please?
While we wait for Teson’s response, feel free to read the Wikipedia entry on the One-state Solution at your leisure. It doesn’t seem to cohere with his claim.
If the wait is long enough, you can also read through Reason Papers’s 2012 symposium on Sari Nusseibeh’s version of the one state solution from his book, What Is a Palestinian State Worth?(Note: The RP link goes to a long PDF that requires lots of scrolling down. You can also access the symposium this way, if you find it more convenient.)
As PoT readers know, I spent two months in Palestine this summer teaching at Al Quds University. My experience doesn’t cohere with Teson’s off-the-cuff claim any more than the Wikipedia entry does. And don’t make me haul out back issues of the Journal of Palestine Studies, please. Because you know what will happen if I do?
Postscript, 10 pm: I wonder whether Professor Teson could explain in mathematical terms how majorities of 63% of Israelis and 53% of Palestinians amount to “almost everyone.” Do 37% of Israelis and 47% of Palestinians = no one? Feel free, Professor, to use scratch paper and show your work.
Oh wait, too far to the right for you, huh? Well, then, let’s make a left turn. Wrong part of the left? You could always talk to the nice folks at Dissent. They were “rethinking” things five years ago.
While we’re turning left, why not talk to some Arabs along the way? Like this one.
Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump on Saturday reframed his claim that he saw Muslims in Jersey City, New Jersey, cheering the attacks on the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center in Manhattan on Sept. 11, 2001 by asserting the sentiment was shared worldwide.
“Worldwide, the Muslims were absolutely going wild,” the real estate mogul said at a campaign rally in Sarasota, Florida.
That wouldn’t be a “reframe.” It would be a wholesale concession.
Trump also doubled down on his initial claim. “I talked about Muslims celebrating in New Jersey. And everyone knows it’s true … people saw. So I made that statement. I didn’t think it was a big deal because I thought everybody knew, adding that “everybody admits worldwide, Muslims were absolutely going wild” over the events of Sept. 11. He later criticized “Barack Hussein Obama” for the administration’s response to terrorist attacks.
VIDEO CLIP OF DONALD TRUMP, IN WHICH HE SAYS:“Hey, I watched when the World Trade Center came tumbling down. And I watched in Jersey City, New Jersey, where thousands and thousands of people were cheering as that building was coming down. Thousands of people were cheering.”
STEPHANOPOULOS:“You know, the police say that didn’t happen and all those rumors have been on the Internet for some time. So did you misspeak yesterday?”
TRUMP: “It did happen. I saw it.”
Asked whether he saw them, he changes his story in mid-stride:
STEPHANOPOULOS:“You saw that…”
TRUMP:It was on television. I saw it.
STEPHANOPOULOS:“…with your own eyes?”
TRUMP: “George, it did happen.”
So the new story is not that Trump saw the celebration either with his own eyes, or on TV, but that “people” saw it. That’s not a “reframe.” It’s a liar telling a new lie to get out of the last one he told because he never managed to get his story straight in the first place.
Trump is on record as saying that the celebration story was “well covered at the time.” But with just a few exceptions, almost all of that coverage denied that there were celebrations. The few exceptions were a couple of right wing outlets (The New York Post, City Journal), a stray sentence here or there in the mainstream press (e.g., the Kovaleski-Kunkle article in The Washington Post), and then “shock jock” radio reporting of the sort associated with the old Scott Shannon/Todd Pettingill radio show on WPLJ-FM. But the mainstream media almost unanimously rejected the veracity of the rumors. This fact is too obvious to require demonstration. If you doubt it, trawl through back issues of the Herald News, Bergen Record, Star Ledger, New York Times, Washington Post, and Wall Street Journal. When you find the celebration rumors mentioned, you’ll find their veracity denied.*
So, barring psychosis or brazen dishonesty, there is simply no way to claim, as Trump does here, that the veracity of the celebration rumor was ubiquitously taken as uncontroversial. That claim is even more deranged than Trump’s original claim that thousands of people were celebrating 9/11 in Jersey City. It’s an Orwellian attempt to claim that everyone has always agreed that thousands of Muslims were celebrating 9/11 in Jersey City!
Given this, the Reuters reporting involves a subtle whitewashing of Trump’s deceptions. In abbreviating the direct quotation and describing it as a “reframe,” Reuters gives the impression that Trump merely confused the celebrations in East Jerusalem with celebrations he thought were taking place in Jersey City, so that what he’s now doing is merely backpedaling, i.e., claiming that he’d really been referring to the East Jerusalem celebrations the whole time. That would be dishonest enough, but as The Washington Post coverage makes clear, it’s not in fact what Trump is doing. What he’s doing is backpedaling while pedaling forward: he’s covering the old lie both by bringing up the celebrations in other countries, and by asserting that everyone knew that celebrations had taken place in Jersey City.
Now take a look at the actual footage of Trump’s Sarasota speech. He rambles a lot, but finally gets to the issue under discussion around minute 7 or so.
There is no “reframe” here at all except that celebrations in “Jersey City” have now become celebrations in unspecified “parts of New Jersey,” and the controversy over their occurrence has now miraculously disappeared under a storm of eleventh-hour tweets to Trump’s Twitter feed.
The Kasich camp has now released a video critical of Trump. The presentation is a bit melodramatic, and the Nazi allusion is a little over the top, but in some ways it’s quite appropriate, and something that Trump richly deserves.
There are reports out there that Trump’s popularity has fallen significantly this week. Opinion polls are about as reliable an indicator of the future as tea leaves or burnt offerings, but it would be nice to think that this is the beginning of the end of Donald Trump’s bid for the White House.
“I have a very good memory, Chuck. I’ll tell you, I have a very good memory. I saw it somewhere on television many years ago and I never forgot it — and it was on television, too,” Trump said.
The real estate mogul claimed he’s heard reports of the celebrations in different New Jersey cities. He said his staff is looking for clips of television reports from the time that will prove his claim.
If he has such a great memory, why can’t he remember where he saw it, or when? Or what he saw? Or where exactly it took place? Or what channel it was on? And what does he plan to say if they don’t find anything?
“I’ve heard Jersey City. I’ve heard Paterson. It was 14 years ago,” Trump said. “But I saw it on television, I saw clips, and so did many other people — and many people saw it in person. I’ve had hundreds of phone calls to the Trump organization saying, ‘We saw it. There was dancing in the streets.’ “
Let’s not get distracted, Donald. The question is not what he’s hearing now, but what he saw then. Wouldn’t an honest person interested in the truth have first found the clips, and then made accusations?
On Tuesday, Trump’s chief counsel, Michael Cohen, stood by the comments, even as he was pressed by CNN’s Chris Cuomo on the fact that there’s no evidence to back up the claims and that accuracy matters in a presidential race.
“He’s probably right,” Cohen said of Trump on “New Day.” “There’s no way to say that it wasn’t.”
Cohen said the argument over the number of people celebrating is misplaced, and that Trump was making a broader point about enemies within the United States.
“Whether it’s thousands and thousands or 1,000 people or even just 1 person, it’s irrelevant. To celebrate this tragedy … it’s wrong,” Cohen said. “What the exact number is, I don’t know, and I don’t think it’s relevant. What’s important is that there are bad people among us.”
So here’s the million-dollar recipe: (1) Start with an ad ignorantium fallacy. (2) Then backpedal on your client’s claim while your client is doubling down on the maximal version of the same claim. (3) Relying on (2), commit an ignoratio elenchi. (4) End by stoking the prejudices of your audience.
I grew up as a teenager listening to this song, regarding it as a bit hyperbolic and ultimately inapplicable to the country I lived in. We live and learn: it’s on its way to becoming the soundtrack of American political life.
*Postscript, Nov. 30, 2015: Politico has a useful list of articles derived from a Lexis-Nexis search for the dates Sept. 11-Dec. 31, 2001. I agree with the conclusion they draw: “…there is no conclusive evidence that any New Jersey residents celebrated the attacks, and there is no evidence whatsoever of any demonstrations where ‘thousands and thousands of people’ cheered.”
But contrary to what they say, their “search of newspaper and television transcripts” is not “exhaustive” (in any case, their list is not; perhaps their search went beyond the items in the list). Their list doesn’t include reporting from the Herald News (e.g., byHilary Burke), and doesn’t include all of the reporting done by the Bergen Record (e.g., reporting by John Chadwick and by Nicole Gaudiano, as well as statements by Robert Grant, the Paterson city spokesman).It also misses the items that Gary Alan Fine and I cited in our 2005 paper from The Wall Street Journal, Orlando Sentinel, New York Post, and City Journal, and omits most of the reporting, print and television, of the “five dancing Israelis” rumor. It misses the MTV show recently uncovered by The Washington Post. Finally, it misses the fact that the rumors were repeated by Daniel Pipes in his book Militant Islam Reaches America, and were debated online by Pipes and me in 2004 at the History News Network’s website. (Granted, the latter debate is outside of their search parameters, but Pipes used the occasion to spread more rumors.) I’ll try to discuss some of this material in forthcoming posts.
Here’s a short list, not intended to be exhaustive:
Hilary Burke, “Nobody in City Celebrated, Officials Report,” Herald News (Sept. 15, 2001), p. A4.
Christopher Callahan, “Anatomy of an Urban Legend,” American Journalism Review (November 2001).
John Chadwick, “Battling Rumors and Hatred,” Bergen Record (Sept. 13, 2001), p. A8.
Anthony Colarossi, “Critics: Radio Shows Fuel Hate,” Orlando Sentinel (Sept. 14, 2001), p. D1.
Nicole Gaudiano, “Scares, Hoaxes and False Alarms,” Bergen Record, (Sept. 14, 2001), p. A19.
Robert Grant, “Yelling Fire in a Packed Theater,” Bergen Record (Oct. 1, 2001), p. I6.
Drew Limsky, “America’s Course: Of War,” Los Angeles Times (Sept. 23, 2001), p. M2.
The latest intelligence communique from the United States Department of State. Don’t say you weren’t warned of the trivially obvious, ex post facto.
The State Department alerts U.S. citizens to possible risks of travel due to increased terrorist threats. Current information suggests that ISIL (aka Da’esh), al-Qa’ida, Boko Haram, and other terrorist groups continue to plan terrorist attacks in multiple regions. These attacks may employ a wide variety of tactics, using conventional and non-conventional weapons and targeting both official and private interests. This Travel Alert expires on February 24, 2016.
I’ve updated an October 2014 post on character-based voting in light of the recent controversy over Donald Trump’s behavior as a GOP presidential candidate. The post takes the form of a critique of Jason Brennan’s views on that topic as expressed in his 2012 book, The Ethics of Voting. The post had originally used India’s Narendra Modi as a foil for thinking about Brennan’s views, but it’s occurred to me that Donald Trump is an even better example.
Note: The post is at least 5,000 words long and (relative to my recent posts here) sort of technical. The November 27 postscript I just added is about 800 words long.
Policy of Truth 