Now for something completely different. A blogger has claimed it was outrageous of me to belittle Glenn Beck’s brain power without the attendant detailed textual exegesis and footnotes—just about. I had mistakenly surmised that among those with a modicum of intelligence certain things are manifestly true. Alas, the culture has deteriorated to such an extent that no a priori agreement exists about intelligence and its manifestations.
Since Beck, mercifully, doesn’t write (he will, he will; the dreaded book will appear in the fullness of time), there are vaults of TV-time evidence to prove he is not too bright. For anyone who possesses a smidgen of intelligence, who lives in America, has watched a lot of TV, and listens to the radio; let us establish a couple of a priori truths:
Beck is a bit of a simpleton. Rush Limbaugh isn’t the brightest. Hannity is not too smart. Nor was poor Anna Nicole Smith, RIP. If civilization means anything, some things in this world must simply be accepted as axiomatic. But standards mean squat, I know, I know!
And while we’re at it, the economic laws of supply and demand do not need empirical proof for their validation; they are a priori true. Or, as Gene Callahan puts it in this excellent essay, “they are logically prior to any empirical study of economic phenomena.”
Category Archives: Journalism
Updated: Rotten Reporting Again (About Those 650 Thou Dead in Iraq)
The Associates Press (via Rational Report) reports that:
A “controversial new study contends that nearly 655,000 Iraqis have died in the three-year-old conflict in Iraq—more than 10 times higher than other independent estimates of the toll.”
Dubya and his Oh-What-A-Wonderful-War contingent dispute these figures. And so they should.
The latest Lancet report has never claimed 655,000 civilian deaths total, but rather that, “An estimated 655,000 more Iraqis have died as a consequence of the March 2003 military invasion of Iraq than would have been expected in a non-conflict situation.”
What we have here, once again, is rotten reporting. When the first Lancet report appeared two year ago, mainstream press also fudged the facts. I think I was the only writer who made the necessary distinctions. I explained:
“In the final days of Saddam’s reign of terror, i.e., in the 15 months preceding the invasion, the primary causes of death in Iraq were natural: heart attack, stroke and chronic illness. Since Iraq became another neocon object lesson, the primary cause of death has been violence, according to the report.
Since March 2003, Iraqis have suffered from an excess of deaths, if you will. As Dr. Les Roberts, author of the study, told BBC News, ‘About 100,000 excess deaths, or more, have happened since the 2003 invasion of Iraq.’
According to the study, “The relative risk, the risk of deaths from any cause was two-and-a-half times higher for Iraqi civilians after the 2003 invasion than in the preceding 15 months. But ‘the risk of death by violence for civilians in Iraq is now 58 times higher than before the U.S.-led invasion.”
Update: My thanks to Bob Murphy and Sean Mercer for demanding further clarification: My point is non-ideological; I’d simply like to see accurate reporting. The 650,000 figure would include deaths due to a greater incidence of heart attacks, cancer, strokes, stress and displacement-related deaths, deaths associated with a lack of health care and potable water, etc. Thus, silly journalists build doubt into the report because they give the impression that this many people died directly because of the war. Rather, the figure represents both direct and indirect casualties of the invasion, which is why it’s believable.
It goes without saying that the report is a criminal indictment of the invasion. If not for the invasion, the leading cause of death in Iraqi would still be natural, as it was during Saddam’s suzerainty.
Danes and Deniers
Anti-Semitism, Free Speech, Islam, Israel, Jihad, Journalism, Judaism & Jews, Media
Holocaust denier David Irving, whom I’ve defended here, has become the cause celebre for the terminally self-righteous. Some in the West simply refuse to defend the Danes in a meaningful and morally unambiguous manner. So instead, they bang on about the admittedly shabby treatment of Irving. In their eyes, the Danes and their controversial drawings cannot be disentangled from the Irving issue.
At the risk of repeating myself, the need to repeal laws prohibiting hate speech and Holocaust denial cannot be overemphasized; nobody wants to see Irving jailed for being a jerk.
So what of those who say hounding this Holocaust denier makes the West “guilty of the crimes with which we charge the Muslims”? Well, the idea that aggression exists on a continuum is asinine—pure left-liberalism. According to this slippery-slope illogic, the European laws banning Holocaust denial—and they are indefensible—are as distasteful as beheading—or scheming to behead—”heretics.”
Now that’s a howler!
Virtuous Vikings
[W]hile clucking about the sanctity of free speech, countless commentators climbed into the Danes. The illustrators were called juvenile, obnoxious, Islamophobic, even immoral. They were accosted for doing nothing to advance enlightened argument; of acting in “terrifically bad taste”; and indulging in “gratuitous provocation, not worthy of publication,” to quote some of the politicians and pundits who trashed them…
What was the premise for dubbing mild satire immoral and unenlightened, and inadvertently maligning the innocent illustrators? Other than that the stuff offends Muslims, I see none. And to give offence is not always immoral. It is certainly not immoral to lampoon the connection between Muhammad, author of Islam, and the savagery and atavism that grip the Muslim world today…
Read the complete column, “Virtuous Vikings,” here. It leads today on WND’s Commentary page. As always, comments are welcome.