Misreporting the Fort Hood Mass Shootings

The New York Times couldn’t confirm it, but reported a disparaging comment written by somebody of a similar name anyway. The Associated Press ran a full, related story — based on unconfirmed quotes — on the alleged Muslim perpetrator of Thursday’s unfortunate shooting incident at Fort Hood allegedly yelling “Allahu Akbar” as he fired on his unsuspecting victims. The Daily Beast decided to run this same tidbit as a lead on their landing page too. See this visual comparison between The Times and The Daily Beast.

How is this going to help the American public form a coherent picture of reality in their heads? How is this not going to further inflame American public sentiment towards Muslims? I am not saying to conceal such elements in reporting a story, but being self-reflexive and according a person’s ethnicity and religious beliefs adequate context is also part of the reporting process. It’s about being fair and balanced, no?

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On Climate Change, Resignation, Already?

Photo: Flickr/Gerald Simmons

So after much chatter, we are only finally seeing the start of the long climate-change bill fight. Senate Democrats introduced a draft of a climate bill Wednesday that suggests the legislation will include a more ambitious greenhouse gas emissions target than one passed by the House. The New York Times reports:

The measure, sponsored by Senators Barbara Boxer of California and John Kerry of Massachusetts, seeks to achieve by 2020 a 20 percent reduction from 2005 levels of carbon dioxide emissions, compared with 17 percent in the House bill, according to the 801-page draft, which circulated on Tuesday. The House and Senate bills both include a long-term target of an 83 percent reduction by 2050.

Reactions are already flowing in thick and fast, with Andrew Revkin musing about the absence of the C-word. The Senate version is called “Clean Energy Jobs and American Power Act,” while the earlier House one is called “American Clean Energy and Security Act” — in both cases, leaving out any overt reference to “climate”. Revkin acknowledges how that word lacks political traction and laments how “the economics of climate legislation still seems to matter more to many people than what a bill would do to limit environmental risk”.

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Enlightening America’s Self Interest

Photo: Flickr User Liberal Democrats

Here’s a thought: Even if you think global warming is a sham, wouldn’t the invention of environmentally friendly technologies and the reduction in our carbon emissions STILL be a politically superior thing to be doing, underpinned by a stronger moral case? Sure, the cost of adapting to climate change is immense, but for a country that likes to see itself as a global power, any domestic legislation guided by narrow self interest and a failure to engage in the global process would invariably compromise that reality — especially in a multi or unipolar global polity.

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Why the Latest Nigerian Unrest Should Matter More

If the Obama administration is really interested in conducting America’s foreign relations differently, it should take a deep seated interest in the situation in Nigeria right now.

The New York Times reported Nigerian security forces on Thursday confirmed the death of the leader of a fundamentalist Islamic sect in the city of Maiduguri, apparently ending a fierce five-day campaign against the group that may have left hundreds dead across northern Nigeria.

The militant group led by Mohammed Yusuf, known as Boko Haram or Taliban, wants to overthrow the Nigerian government and impose a strict version of Islamic law. It has been blamed for days of violent unrest in which hundreds of people died in clashes between his followers and security forces.

A military spokesman would not say exactly how Yusuf was killed, though it has been widely reported that he was killed after being captured. But in an interview with the BBC’s Network Africa, the Nigerian Information Minister Dora Akunyili said while she was concerned about the death and that the government would find out “exactly what happened,” Yusuf’s demise was “positive” for Nigeria.

The State Department has not commented on the Nigerian situation so far, but such alleged police violence would likely raise tricky questions when Secretary Clinton visits next week, as part of her seven-nation African swing that begins Aug. 5 in Kenya at the 8th U.S. – Sub-Saharan Africa Trade and Economic Cooperation Forum.
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Secretary of State, not Superwoman

Reading New York Times’ David Landler’s commentary on Hillary Clinton’s first major address as Secretary of State at the Council of Foreign Relations, one gets the impression that Clinton is Superwoman repressed by her boss and nemesis in the White House.

Landler calls her speech “an effort to recapture the limelight after a period in which Mrs. Clinton has nursed both a broken elbow and the perception that the State Department has lost influence to an assertive White House.” He also situates her speech against the backdrop of the antecedent rivalry between Clinton and Obama from their bruising presidential primary campaigns last year.

What is there to recapture? Politico reported Secretary Clinton has traveled, in her first six months in office, nearly 100,000 miles visiting two dozen countries, many of them more than once – and that’s even more than two of her more successful predecessors, James Baker and Henry Kissinger in their first six-months. Besides, a successful Secretary of State is not necessarily somebody who is constantly in the limelight. Landler’s harping on the Obama-Clinton rivalry also comes across as being tired and neglects Clinton’s own competence and dynamism.

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