In the Wake of Charlie Hebdo

As of this posting, there are at least two separate hostage standoff situations near Paris. One is at a kosher market (I've heard it referred to as a supermarket, deli, or grocery) on Ave Porte de Vincennes in the 13th Arr (that'd be Southeastern Paris). The other is near Charles de Gaulle airport. There have also been reports of an incident near the Eiffel Tower in the Trocadero, but so far news about that incident is limited.

There have been casualties reported in one of the incidents, with at least two dead.

The two standoff situations appear related to each other and to the Charlie Hebdo attacks, as well as a separate attack resulting in the death of a French policewoman the other day. It's likely all part of the same cell.

Yet, there's something irking me about all this. We're being told that it required training and tactics to carry off the attacks, but yet the best that this cell could manage is to kill a bunch of unarmed journalists and a couple of cops who were caught by surprise and off-guard before engaging in standoffs at locations like a grocery store.

Is this the best that al Qaeda in Yemen can do?

I know that sounds off or somehow callous but if you're studying tactics, methods, and capabilities, al Qaeda has gone from being able to pull off spectacular attacks against the USS Cole (a military target no less), the African embassy bombings that killed hundreds of people, and 9/11, which killed nearly 3,000 people and injured thousands more, to now being able to attack a French satire paper.

That's quite telling about the limits of what al Qaeda is able to do more than a decade after 9/11. It doesn't mean let your guard down, but it should also put things in perspective.

Also putting things into perspective? That the cry and hue about Muslims overwhelming Europe are so vastly overblown that a handy dandy visual is needed to hammer it home:

This is the best visualization I've yet seen of Europe's "Muslim tide" hysteria pic.twitter.com/a681LGp4yR

— Doug Saunders (@DougSaunders) January 9, 2015

Or, perhaps a few other statistics about the threats from terrorism:

Less Than 2 Percent Of Terrorist Attacks In The E.U. Are Religiously Motivated. http://t.co/NAuKUyYXNn

— lawhawk (@lawhawk) January 9, 2015

And if you're listening closely, just substitute Jew for Muslim in all those calls for banning Muslims from entering the country because the acts of a handful are indicative of the intent of all (and that's the most limited kind of rhetoric streaming from the right, which also includes expulsion and flat out genocide). Even in France, where anti-Semitism is rampant, the fact is that most people - of all religions - just want to live in peace, and there are those who want to deny everyone that opportunity. They happen to include Islamist extremists who do not speak for all Muslims.

So, while attention is rightly focused on Paris and the search for the Charlie Hebdo killers, there's Muslims living in fear of Islamic extremists the world over, and few places are more dangerous right now for Muslims than Nigeria where Boko Haram is operating with ruthless abandon. This terror group is rampaging across northeastern Nigeria, where reports of slaughter continue. That terror group is now threatening Cameroon as well, and Niger has now refused to assist Nigeria in retaking the area around Baga. Reports continue circulating that 2,000 or more people were killed by Boko Haram since the start of the year there, and that at least 20,000 people have been displaced. Some reportedly drowned attempting to flee across Lake Chad.

Yet, the silence and lack of media reports and access means that this horrific attack isn't getting anywhere near the press coverage of the attacks in Paris.

Cross posted to LGF.

Injured Journalists Smuggled Out of Syria As Violence Continues

The Red Cross continues their efforts to try and bring humanitarian aid to civilians caught in the crossfire and under siege by Syrian loyalists to Bashar al-Assad in places like Homs. They, along with Syrian rebel forces, were finally successful in smuggling out one of the journalists injured in the same attack that killed American journalist Marie Colvin and a French photographer.

Syrian rebels smuggled a wounded British journalist out of the besieged central city of Homs Tuesday and whisked him to safety in neighboring Lebanon, activist groups said. They did not manage to evacuate a wounded French journalist or the bodies of two other Western reporters killed last week.

The Syrian opposition group Local Coordination Committees and global activist group Avaaz said Paul Conroy was the only foreign journalist to escape Syria. Rima Fleihan, an LCC spokeswoman, said the Sunday Times photographer was smuggled out by Syrian army defectors.

There are unconfirmed reports that a wounded French journalist was also evacuated, but there's no confirmation despite claims from French President Sarkozy that it has happened.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton gave one of the stronger statements that Assad is a war criminal. It's an argument I've been making for some time now - based on the following evidence:

1. purposefully targeting civilian areas without regard for civilian casualties;
2. collective punishment by withholding humanitarian aid and all manner of supplies to embattled cities such as Homs and Hama;
3. specifically targeting opponents of the regime for elimination;
4. mass killings, including reports surfacing yesterday concerning the murder of dozens of civilians attempting to flee Hama but who were killed en masse near a checkpoint; and
5. unlawful detention of protesters and opposition groups.

Assad's forces are not restricting the use of deadly force solely against terrorists or collaborators as they have repeatedly stated on their state-controlled media outlets. They are engaging in the wanton attacks on cities like Hama and Homs to crush the opposition pursuant to Assad's version of his father's Hama rules. Crush the opposition to remain in power is what Assad is seeking to accomplish. 

To that end, Assad's more than willing to violate all manner of human rights to stay in power. 

Syrian forces are pushing deeper into Homs in an attempt to crush the opposition - and the carnage is expected to increase significantly in coming days. Despite Assad claiming that the new constitution approved in a referendum will increase political participation, Assad shows no signs of ever relinquishing power. Russia and China continue backing Assad, with Russia claiming that the referendum is a sign of reform and change.

Considering that Assad's forces intensified their crackdowns in areas that oppose the regime, it's not surprising that such a large percentage of those voting supported the referendum. Those opposed to the regime boycotted the vote, even if they were capable of going to a voting location without fear of being killed in crossfire. It's a self-serving referendum that does nothing to expand political access or bring about the end to the bloody crackdown.  

The Flawed NYC Teacher Ratings Released

Local media outlets had been pressing for the release of teacher evaluations collected and evaluated according to criteria that the Department of Education had admitted were incomplete, inaccurate, and would lead to incorrect conclusions. They succeeded in getting the evaluations released over the weekend, and the most striking thing that hits at the utility of the grading system is the margin of error associated with many of the teachers.

Consider a teacher with a grade of 50. That grade may be accompanied by a margin of error of 35. That means that the teacher may have either flunked (needing serious remedial assistance) or was a very good teacher. Sadly, a margin of error wasn't uncommon. In fact, it's on the low end of the margin of error. Quite a few teachers had margins of error of 50 or higher, which means that the teacher either flunked or was excellent.

How exactly can anyone glean anything of worth from a measure like that?

It's something that the media outlets themselves aren't exactly delving into. The criteria that went into the scoring was flawed, and the teachers union themselves admit that there are good teachers and bad teachers - but this evaluation does nothing to indicate which teachers are or aren't good.

Based on the margin of error alone, it would make the data dump to be useless as an educational tool, but quite inflammatory if one wants to use talking points to undermine the UFT's ability to negotiate a new contract with the City.

This doesn't mean that teachers shouldn't be graded - they should. The measures that the Department put together don't take into account whether a teacher does a satisfactory job or not. Basing a teacher rating on the ability of a class to pass a standardized test doesn't mean the student is necessarily prepared for future employment or academic achievement - only that they're teaching to the test. When a significant number of students are learning English as a second language, those teachers are at a major disadvantage.

A better approach would involve much more screening of teachers through in-class assessments and evaluations on a regular basis. New teachers would get more support from the Department so that they can get up to speed. After all, many professions need years before the given person can claim competency in the nuances of their given profession. The same goes with teaching - learning how to teach and reach out to even the problem students to get them to learn (often when many students don't want to learn, let alone be in class).

That's something that could be accomplished by reducing the number of administrators in the bureaucracy and increasing the number of teacher-mentor positions who can assist teachers with fewer years of service.

Not only would this reduce pension costs over the long run (where administrators have higher pensions than teachers whose pensions are largely capped to their actual salary and required coverages), but it would likely result in more teachers in the classroom. Adding bureaucrats does nothing to improve the in-class experience for the students (or customer if you're going with a business-centric model).

Journalists Killed In Syria; The Violence Continues

Syria's regime claims deep regret over the deaths and injuries of journalists, including Frenchman Gilles Jacquier, who was covering a pro-regime rally in Homs. A mortar attack was being covered by the journalists and then a second mortar came down on the same area, killing and wounding several journalists, including Jacquier.

While the regime is quick to claim that terrorists and opposition were responsible, questions remain over how the pro-regime rally could have come under attack and whether the regime itself carried out the attack to curry favor and shift international opinion against the protests against Assad's regime.

International journalists have largely been banned from Syria, so most of the footage comes from third party sources that can't be directly corroborated. Here, we've got CNN correspondent operating in the country, but being minded by Syrian officials who take him and his colleagues around the country. They are just as much a mouthpiece of the regime as the official Syrian media outlets. They aren't able to independently report, let alone investigate, the acts they've seen.

Then again, the regime's forces aren't always using military equipment; often they've been seen using pickup trucks and other technicals, rather than marked military vehicles. This can help them blend into the background and also shows just how difficult it is to figure out who's doing what.

At the same time, another Arab League monitor is vowing to quit, claiming that the military is continuing to carry out attacks against civilians and using mosques to store weapons. The Arab League mission has itself come under attack from forces, causing several injuries and slowing any further observer missions to the country.

What we're seeing is that some of the monitors appear to be genuinely concerned and dismayed over the ongoing crackdown in Syria but are hampered by both Bashar al-Assad's regime and the Arab League's own issues.

The Truth Emerges About Iconic World War II Photo

An iconic photo that has been published countless times in relation to the anniversary of the Pearl Harbor attacks may not be all that it's cracked up to be. MSNBC has apparently gotten to the bottom of a photo depicted a group of women firefighters at Pearl Harbor.

It turns out that while there were indeed women firefighters who were tasked with that arduous duty, according to one of the women, the photograph was not taken during the day of the attacks.

Lowe said the wartime photo was certainly not taken on Dec. 7, 1941, the day the Imperial Japanese Navy shocked the United States into joining World War II. On that Sunday morning she was headed to church when the bombing started, and she went ahead anyway because she wasn't sure what else to do. But she and her friends from the Dole pineapple factory did soon go to work as civilian workers at the Pearl Harbor Naval Shipyard, and one of their duties was to fight fires. She said the photo was probably taken at a training exercise during the war. She said she had no idea that her photo was in history books.

So the bottom line: These women were female firefighters at Pearl Harbor, the place. To that extent the photo is authentic. But they weren't fighting a fire when this photograph was taken, and they weren't fighting any fires on Dec. 7, the day we remember every year on Pearl Harbor Day. In addition to Lowe's account, there is strong documentary evidence that this is a Navy publicity photo taken to showcase the roles of women during the war.

The Hunt For Khadafi Continues As Fighting Continues In Libya

The hunt for Mumar Khadafi continues. Mumar Khadafi was nowhere to be seen in the capital of Tripoli or in his overrun compound, but he apparently issued an audio recording calling on his supporters to fight to the bitter end. He also vowed to fight to victory or death. Rebels ransacked Khadafi's compound, which included all kinds of valuables, including some of the uniforms and costumes Khadafi wore in public, statues to himself, and other assorted items.



I think the Libyans will oblige him on the latter bit. Khadafi's now incapable of winning; his forces were routed from key areas around the country and his area of operations keeps shrinking. It's wishful thinking for the loyalists to think they can stem the tide of history.

Khadafi can't be seen out in the public and his son Saif could only show himself during a few minutes during the overnight to repute claims he had been captured by rebel forces.

None of this means that the country is safe by any stretch. Journalists holed up in the Rixos hotel are effectively prisoners to Khadafi's loyalists; they aren't allowed to leave, which means that the few journalists who opted not to stay in the hotel are going to get the scoops of a lifetime. The fighting continues as pockets of resistance are dealt with by the rebel forces, and artillery and gunfire continues to ricochet around the capital.

The concern is that like Saddam Hussein, did Khadafi plot the disappearance of his key forces so as to carry on an insurgency against the rebel groups.

With Gaddafi and son Saif al-Islam still nowhere to be found, it is likely that the family slipped out of the capital at the last moment, along with their die-hard supporters, according to one Libyan who has had contact with regime supporters during the conflict. He says he was told last month by tribal officials allied to Gaddafi that they had been carefully crafting a retreat, as the regime increasingly became aware that it was unlikely to survive. "It is obvious that everything is ready for them," says Noman Benotman, former head of an armed militant Libyan group who is now senior analyst for the London think tank Quilliam. "The way he evacuated Tripoli was all part of the plan." (See pictures of the lengthy battle for Libya.)

In a crackling audio address from his hideout in the early hours of Wednesday, Gaddafi said he had made a "tactical retreat" from Tripoli. Of the rebel fighters, he said: "They are evil incarnate. We should fight them." His words were broadcast on a new pro-Gaddafi web-television channel seemingly designed to replace the national propaganda network the leader has just lost. The address was widely dismissed by Libyans as the desperate words of a defeated tyrant. But they might hold some other meaning, according to Benotman. He claims to have met officials last month from a "very significant, large tribe" supportive of the regime, who told him that they had made a "pact" to support the regime's holdouts if Gaddafi's rule collapsed — even if the Colonel himself was captured or killed. Benotman believes that Gaddafi might have retreated to Al-Jufra, a military base south of the leader's hometown of Sirte, and that Saif al-Islam likely slipped out of Tripoli early Tuesday, shortly after dropping by the Rixos Hotel, where about 35 foreign journalists have been besieged since last weekend.

UPDATE:
Rebels have placed a bounty on Khadafi, dead or alive.

While Khadafi purportedly claims to still be inside Tripoli somewhere, I think he's slipped out of the city and moved towards Sirte, which is his hometown. I just can't picture him leading this fight from the front and he's much more likely to be caught wearing a burkha or costume to avoid being captured than wearing a military uniform.

UPDATE:
The number of regimes and countries still considering Khadafi (or Gathafi as his passport apparently shows) is shrinking. Burkina Faso and Chad, two nations which received large amounts of aid from Libya under Col Gaddafi, have now joined the list of more than 40 countries recognising the rebels' NTC as Libya's legitimate authority. Burkina Faso says it will offer Col Gaddafi exile if he requests it. From what Khadafi has been saying, I doubt Burkina Faso will have to worry about putting him up. The BBC also reports that there are more defections.

Not among those who have distanced themselves - [T]hugo Chavez of Venezuela.

News Corp Gearing Up For Scandal Spreading To US?

News Corp is busy hiring big-name lawyers to represent different portions of the company in the US against possible legal action from the hacking scandal that threatens to overtake the company in the UK.

The company's nine independent directors hired former Manhattan U.S. Attorney Mary Jo White and former Attorney General Michael Mukasey, who served under President George W. Bush.

The directors are said to be increasingly concerned about Rupert Murdoch's stewardship of the firm and appear to be bracing for new U.S. legal trouble.

By denying knowledge of the phone hacking, bribery and hush money rampant at News of the World, experts said Rupert Murdoch and his son James may have left themselves open to shareholder charges of incompetence.

Separately, The Wall Street Journal reported News Corp. hired Washington lawyer Mark Mendelsohn, a top expert in the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act.

These are prudent moves that any corporation would have to take, but it also signals just how serious the company is considering the possibility of charges in the US. They're worried about shareholder suits and criminal investigations.



At the same time, there are reports that there are still other news outlets in the UK that engaged in similar behavior, including ones that aren't affiliated with News Corp. They include The People (operated by The Mirror Group) and even Piers Morgan was accused of such tactics before coming to CNN.

On Tuesday, a member of Parliament accused the CNN anchor Piers Morgan of phone hacking when he was the editor of The Daily Mirror. Mr. Morgan strenuously denied the accusations and demanded an apology. And last week, news reports showed that the actor Jude Law has brought a hacking lawsuit against The News of the World’s sister newspaper, The Sun.

Five former journalists at The News of The World’s rival Sunday newspaper, The People, run by the Mirror group, said in interviews that they regularly witnessed hacking in that newsroom in the late 1990s to early 2000. “I don’t think anyone quite realized the criminality of it,” said one former reporter at The People, who spoke on condition of anonymity. A former reporter for the Sunday Mirror, another News of the World rival, described the extensive use of private detectives to obtain personal information. A former senior News of the World editor, Neil Wallis, who has been arrested on unspecified accusations of phone hacking, left The People in 2003 to join the Murdoch tabloid.

Nick Fullagar, director of communications for Trinity Mirror, the parent company of The Daily Mirror and The People, said, “Trinity Mirror’s position is clear. Our journalists work within the criminal law and the P.C.C. code of conduct,” referring to Britain’s press regulatory body, the Press Complaints Commission. Within Mr. Murdoch’s empire, the flagship daily tabloid The Sun has also been accused of hacking phones. The lawsuit by Mr. Law, filed last month, says that four articles published in 2005 and 2006 were based on intercepted voice mail.

It also comes as no surprise that News Corp affiliates are soft-pedaling the news coverage; the Fox News Network has devoted a fraction of the coverage that CNN or MSNBC has done, and the NY Post has all but buried the scandal as compared to either the Daily News or the NY Times. The Wall Street Journal has covered the story prominently, but that's the exception rather than the rule.

The scandal is also threatening to take down the British government as new revelations about the hiring of former News of the World editor Andy Coulson as Prime Minister David Cameron. Apparently, he didn't undergo the usual top level background checks of others up for similar positions.

The News Corp. Hacking Scandal Grows Out of Murdoch's Control

Rupert Murdoch attempted to engage in damage control on Friday, even as two of his top corporate allies resigned on Friday, Les Hinton and Rebekah Brooks. This morning, the other shoe dropped on Brooks, as she was arrested in connection with the British hacking scandal.

No amount of apologies and promises of compensation will make good on the fact that Murdoch's company condoned all manner of illegal activities in the United Kingdom over a period of years.

All the years of shady behavior, criminal violations, and unethical behavior is coming home to roost and Murdoch's media empire is crumbling all around him.

British Labour Party leader Ed Miliband is calling for an overhaul of British media ownership rules, essentially breaking up News Corp's hold on media outlets.

In a fresh salvo against Mr Murdoch's News Corp, the Labour leader said he wanted to forge a cross-party agreement on plans that would reduce the media mogul's UK market share.

In an interview with The Observer, he said: ''I think he has too much power over British public life.''

The News Corp empire has been diminished with the closure of the News of the World over the phone hacking scandal, but it still owns The Sun, The Times, The Sunday Times and 39 per cent of BSkyB.

Having already called successfully for the resignation of Rebekah Brooks, the News International chief executive, Mr Miliband said the Government now needed to look at media ownership rules.

He said: ''I think that we've got to look at the situation whereby one person can own more than 20 per cent of the newspaper market, the Sky platform and Sky News.

The scandal is also likely to claim individuals within Scotland Yard, and the all too cozy relationship between the police force and the media outlets has turned into efforts to control the damage. Heads should roll within the police force:

Inside was a treasure-trove of evidence: 11,000 pages of handwritten notes listing nearly 4,000 celebrities, politicians, sports stars, police officials and crime victims whose phones may have been hacked by The News of the World, a now defunct British tabloid newspaper.

Yet from August 2006, when the items were seized, until the autumn of 2010, no one at the Metropolitan Police Service, commonly referred to as Scotland Yard, bothered to sort through all the material and catalog every page, said former and current senior police officials.

During that same time, senior Scotland Yard officials assured Parliament, judges, lawyers, potential hacking victims, the news media and the public that there was no evidence of widespread hacking by the tabloid. They steadfastly maintained that their original inquiry, which led to the conviction of one reporter and one private investigator, had put an end to what they called an isolated incident.

After the past week, that assertion has been reduced to tatters, torn apart by a spectacular avalanche of contradictory evidence, admissions by News International executives that hacking was more widespread, and a reversal by police officials who now admit to mishandling the case.

Murdoch is likely to be grilled by British parliamentarians on Tuesday, and some of the luster and fear of crossing him has faded in the UK.

Another News Corp. Exec Resigns: Dow Jones CEO Hinton Resigns

Les Hinton has submitted his resignation on the same day as Rebekah Brooks. The Hinton resignation qualifies as a Friday night news dump considering the timing late on Friday. Try to get the big names out of the way before the weekend when no one pays attention.

Les Hinton, who headed News Corp.'s News International unit when the phone-hacking allegations roiling the media empire first arose, on Friday will resign his post as chief executive officer of Dow Jones & Co., according to a person familiar with the matter.

Mr. Hinton had come under increasing scrutiny recently as a cascade of allegations indicated the problems at the center of the scandal were more widespread than he had twice led a parliamentary committee to believe.

In 2007 and 2009, Mr. Hinton told the committee that the company had carried out a full investigation into the matter and was convinced just one of its journalists was involved.

Dow Jones & Co. is publisher of The Wall Street Journal.

Hinton is a key figure in the scandal, and his statements before Parliament are in question as to whether he purposefully misled the British government over the scandal, or whether his investigations didn't uncover more malfeasance in News Corp's outlets.

He claims ignorance of the matter, but admits that his ignorance is not an excuse.

"I have watched with sorrow from New York as the News of the World story has unfolded," Hinton wrote in a section addressed to Murdoch. "I have seen hundreds of news reports of both actual and alleged misconduct during the time I was executive chairman of News International and responsible for the company. The pain caused to innocent people is unimaginable. That I was ignorant of what apparently happened is irrelevant and in the circumstances I feel it is proper for me to resign from News Corp, and apologize to those hurt by the actions of the News of the World."

Murdoch has issued an apology to his readers/viewers, but apologies aren't going to be sufficient, not when your company has broken multiple laws and possibly across multiple jurisdictions (UK and possibly the US). His company has broken what little trust the public had in his reporting and ethics.

Insufficient heads have rolled, and while I understand his need to contain the problem to the UK outfits, with all the people have have swapped jobs in his organization, it would appear that more head will have to roll to clean up the mess and more will have to be done to set things right.

The Coming Downfall of News Corp.

News Corporation, which owns the likes of Fox News, the Wall Street Journal, New York Post, and British Papers such as the Sun and now-shuttered News of the World, and film and publishing companies is on the ropes following disturbing revelations about its improper conduct at several of its British papers over the past decade including hacking of voice mail accounts, bribing public officials, and a whole laundry list of other malfeasance.

As a result, Rupert Murdoch has abandoned his efforts to take over the British BSkyB television network.

A company statement quoted Chase Carey, News Corporation’s Deputy Chairman, President and Chief Operating Officer, as saying “We believed that the proposed acquisition of BSkyB by News Corporation would benefit both companies but it has become clear that it is too difficult to progress in this climate.”

“News Corporation remains a committed long-term shareholder in BSkyB. We are proud of the success it has achieved and our contribution to it,” the statement said.

The development also seemed to end what, for years, had been a close, cozy and influential relationship with the British establishment.

Only hours before the announcement, Prime Minister David Cameron had sought to distance himself from Mr. Murdoch and had urged him to drop the bid for BSkyB. The announcement came just before Parliament was set to approve a cross-party call for Mr. Murdoch to abandon his long-cherished desire to take full control of the lucrative satellite broadcaster.

The scandal has also convulsed the British politicians, press and police, forcing them to contemplate unheard-of scrutiny of their ties with each other.

On Wednesday, Mr. Cameron offered details for the first time of a broad inquiry into those relationships to be led by a senior judge, Lord Justice Leveson. Mr. Cameron told Parliament that it would have the power to summon witnesses to testify under oath. The announcement came as Mr. Cameron fought to recover the initiative in a scandal that has turned into potentially the most damaging crisis of his time in office.

That was after the British parliament united in its call for him to drop the takeover bid. News Corp's got to fight a rearguard action to keep the mess from spreading, but because so many within the organization have switched jobs within the company - going from one of the British papers to a US outlet, or vice versa (including those at the heart of the scandal in the UK), trying to contain this is like a wildfire that is splitting out in hundreds of different directions at once and can't be controlled.

If it turns out that Americans, including 9/11 victims, were among the victims of a hacking effort by News Corporation affiliates, the company and Murdoch would be finished. The FCPA (Foreign Corrupt Practices Act) is just the tip of the iceberg, and considering that there are inklings that they may have tapped phones, hacked accounts of 9/11 victims families, or otherwise engaged in illegal activities you're going to see prosecutors opening up cases in New York City and elsewhere.

People Have Been Convicted Of Murder On Far Less Evidence

Everyone seems to be reacting fairly badly against the jury that found Casey Anthony not guilty of murdering her 2-year-old daughter Caylee. There's a media frenzy to boot, which borders on the insane.

I haven't written about the case because I didn't find it particularly fascinating or interesting - parents are charged with the murder of their children all too frequently and this seemed like a pretty cut and dry case. There appeared to be enough circumstantial evidence to find her guilty.

It's entirely understandable that there's so much anger against the jury and Anthony. She might actually go free despite being found guilty on the lesser charges of lying to law enforcement (a judge may find that she should be released on time served from the point of arrest until the verdict yesterday is more than sufficient to cover the sentence for those charges).

Apparently some in the jury wanted to know how Caylee died. It's a natural question, but one that the prosecutors couldn't answer because the medical examiners and investigators couldn't pin down a cause of death.

That shouldn't have stopped a jury from reaching that decision. After all, there are people convicted of murder all the time and no one has recovered a body. In those cases, prosecutors have the task of first proving that the victim is in fact dead, before they can go ahead and prove that the defendant was responsible for the victim's death.

So, this wasn't a case where the jury simply decided that they couldn't find that Casey killed Caylee because she would have faced the death penalty. That calculus doesn't come up in this portion of the trial - the jury considers the punishment separate from the conviction. Had the jury found her guilty of murder, they would have then had to separately decide whether to sentence her to life in prison or the death penalty.

No, I think the real reason that the jury found as it did is the CSI/NCIS/Law and Order'ing of the American jury pool. People have come to expect so much from crime investigation services that they can pinpoint every last detail. This is a case where the jury thought that they should have had more information than they were provided.

This isn't always a bad thing - juries should be discriminating and demanding the burden of proof beyond a reasonable doubt that individuals are guilty of the crimes charged. But it also seems that this particular jury was substituting a burden far higher than even that in demanding more proof that Anthony killed her daughter.

Syria's Assad Continues Brutal Crackdown To Remain in Power; World Fails To Muster To Action

Despite reports of a supposedly tense calm in much of Syria, Bashar al Assad's security forces continue bombarding those it has deemed to be the enemies of the regime - the opposition who has demanded reforms in how the government functions and operates.

In what has emerged as one of the most brutal waves of repression since the Arab Spring began, the Syrian military shelled Homs, the country’s third-largest city, from tanks on Wednesday, forcing hundreds to flee and detaining hundreds more.

The military said on Thursday that it had ended what it called military operations in Homs, and residents reported that 10 tanks had withdrawn from the hardest-hit neighborhood, Bab Amr. After a day of shelling and gunfire, and sporadic shots heard before dawn, the area was relatively quiet, a resident there, Abu Haydar, said by telephone.

“Most of the people have left Bab Amr,” he said. “It’s too dangerous.”

In Baniyas, a city on the coast that was besieged this week, a tense calm persisted. A resident, Abu Obada, said by phone that security forces had urged residents to reopen their shops, but that many were reluctant. Schools and government offices remained closed, he said. In a nearby town, Bayda, residents were asked to sign pledges promising not to take part in protests, which have gathered across the country on successive Fridays.

“Some of them signed,” he said. “Others were too scared to go and sign.”

So far, the military has entered in force three large towns — Homs, Baniyas and Dara’a — with other assaults reported on towns near Dara’a and in the countryside around Baniyas.

It isn't so much as a calm, as the calm before the next storm tomorrow as Assad's security thugs prepare for the oncoming onslaught against the opposition protesters. They're gearing up for still more protests and demonstrations tomorrow.

Meanwhile, a Canadian journalist who went missing in Syria may have been sent to Iran. Journalists have been repeatedly targeted by security forces all throughout those countries affected by the popular uprisings - lest the facts and circumstances of the crackdowns become public knowledge. In this case, the Syrians claim that the journalist attempted to enter using an Iranian passport, but the Iranians claim no knowledge of the journalist's whereabouts.

In a statement, the Syrian embassy in Washington said Ms. Parvaz “attempted to illegally enter” the country using an expired Iranian passport and on false claims that she was a tourist.

Syria said it extradited her on May 1 “in accordance with international law to the passport-issuing country.” The Iranian consul, it added, escorted her to Caspian Airlines Flight 7905 bound for Tehran.

Al-Jazeera reported that Iran’s Foreign Minister, Ali Akbar Salehi, told the network on May 2 that he had no knowledge of the reporter’s whereabouts and urged Syria to look into the case.

The news of her deportation, made public on Wednesday, has left Ms. Parvaz’s family confused, her fiancé, Todd Barker, said.

All the while, protests continue in major Syrian cities, including Aleppo and Hama. Videos from Aleppo show that the Syrian security forces, dressed in plainsclothes, arrested and dragged away protesters to disperse the crowds.

All while the world continues to intervene on behalf of the Libyan people and the rebel groups that have joined together to oppose Mumar Khadafi, thus far there has been no inclination on the part of the UN or Arab League or individual countries to act on behalf of the Syrian people to thwart Assad's military operations against the protesters. Thus far, only harshly worded statements can be mustered against Assad, and that's not saying much. China has come out against military action against Assad, even as the Syrian regime's body count from the latest crackdown is likely to exceed that of Khadafi's.

Autism Awareness Week Kicks Off With Misleading Headlines and Reporting

Autism awareness week kicks off today (and April is autism awareness month), and media outlets are scrambling for content to fill their health segments. However, the accuracy of those reports isn't what it should be.

All too often, they are including references to the debunked vaccine-autism link, which was peddled by Andrew Wakefield, and that continues to guide parents into making poor health care choices for their children. Such was the case with WPIX Channel 11's segment today, which referred to the autism-vaccine link in passing, but then went on to get comments from Autism Speaks, which does not support that bogus claim.

Other reports highlight studies that found that various drug therapies have shown to have little to no effect, but downplay the fact that intensive behavioral therapies have shown to be effective in many cases.

All this information ends up being even more confusing for parents who are coping with children who have autism-spectrum disorders. Parents will frequently turn to the Internet for information and guidance, and that's where the junk science really does its damage where opinions substitute themselves for facts.

A Belated Rollback of Vaccine-Autism Psuedoscience

Dr. Andrew Wakefield has been outed as an outright fraud and charlatan, and now the same can be said of Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., who penned a 2005 article claiming a link between autism and vaccines containing thimerosal.

Salon, which in conjunction with Rolling Stone, published Kennedy's piece, has now fully retracted the piece.

In 2005, Salon published online an exclusive story by Robert F. Kennedy Jr. that offered an explosive premise: that the mercury-based thimerosal compound present in vaccines until 2001 was dangerous, and that he was "convinced that the link between thimerosal and the epidemic of childhood neurological disorders is real."

The piece was co-published with Rolling Stone magazine -- they fact-checked it and published it in print; we posted it online. In the days after running "Deadly Immunity," we amended the story with five corrections (which can still be found logged here) that went far in undermining Kennedy's exposé. At the time, we felt that correcting the piece -- and keeping it on the site, in the spirit of transparency -- was the best way to operate. But subsequent critics, including most recently, Seth Mnookin in his book "The Panic Virus," further eroded any faith we had in the story's value. We've grown to believe the best reader service is to delete the piece entirely.

"I regret we didn't move on this more quickly, as evidence continued to emerge debunking the vaccines and autism link," says former Salon editor in chief Joan Walsh, now editor at large.

It was on the basis of Wakefield's fraud ridden "study" published in the Lancet, and Kennedy's op-ed that spurred parents to avoid giving their children vaccines that could prevent a wide range of easily preventable diseases. Since so many parents have foregone vaccines for their kids, outbreaks of preventable diseases like whooping cough, measles, mumps, have exploded all over the US and around the world.

Salon's writers admit that they screwed up by giving the anti-vaccine crowd ammunition long after evidence emerged showing Kennedy's statements to be bunk. The outlet also acknowledges that the rest of the media didn't do much better as they continue to go to outdated sources of information and continue to hype folks like Jenny McCarthy who tout the vaccine-autism link despite the scientific evidence showing no link and Wakefield's outright fraud.

Israelis Do Care About Peace; But Wish Palestinians Were As Concerned As They Were

Time Magazine stepped into it when they released their latest edition, claiming that Israelis no longer care about peace.

That can't be further from the truth.

Israelis are sick and tired of being at a perpetual state of war. They are going to live hard and fight hard, because they have been under the gun for so long because of Palestinian terror and genocidal threats of annihilation from Israel's myriad enemies both near and distant (Hamas, Hizbullah, Iran, Syria, etc.)

Israel has become more pragmatic and realistic about the chances for peace with the Palestinians and neighboring Arab states following the Israel disengagement from Gaza in 2005 and the Lebanese withdrawal in 2000. Israel has seen a rise in terror attacks from Gaza since the 2005 disengagement - thousands of kassam attacks each of which is designed to kill or maim Israelis or destroy Israeli property within range of the missiles. Far from being an opportunity for peace, Gazans turned to Hamas and the terror group has maintained an iron grip on Gaza expelling Fatah in a bloody civil war.

Those actions have convinced Israel's polity that peace cannot come through more concessions, let alone land for peace. Israel has precious little land as compared to its neighbors, and Israel's so-called partners in peace at the Palestinian Authority have offered up nothing but empty platitudes and maintained the status quo on indoctrination of another generation of Palestinians to see Israel as illegitimate and refuse to recognize its right to exist alongside a Palestinian state.

Time is in the business of selling papers, and couldn't be bothered with reporting on facts or employing even the slightest bit of critical thinking and logic. It glosses over the reasons why Israelis have hardened in their belief that peace is not forthcoming - namely they lack a true partner for peace.

Instead of focusing on Israel, attention should truly be focused on the Palestinians and their double-speak - how they say one thing to their followers and empty statements to the diplomats who continue to think that they can substitute their own reality for the facts on the ground.

Settlements are not the impediment to peace - Palestinian intransigence to Israel's existence is the impediment to peace.

Moreover, how can peace with the Palestinians come when Fatah doesn't speak for at least half the Palestinian people and can't even address the issue of Gaza, which is fully in the hands of Hamas, the Palestinian terror group dedicated to Israel's destruction. Indeed, even the current Fatah charter references back to its original charter, which also calls for Israel's destruction and obligation to fight Israeli oppression.

With "partners" such as this, it is not Israel who no longer cares about peace, but the Palestinians who never did - unless it included a future without Israel's very existence.

Asnine Speech Analysis of the Day

CNN tries to figure out the disconnect between President Obama's most recent speech on the BP oil spill disaster in the Gulf of Mexico and the public's reaction.

Their conclusion?

It's our fault that we didn't comprehend the speech.

President Obama's speech on the gulf oil disaster may have gone over the heads of many in his audience, according to an analysis of the 18-minute talk released Wednesday.

Tuesday night's speech from the Oval Office of the White House was written to a 9.8 grade level, said Paul J.J. Payack, president of Global Language Monitor. The Austin, Texas-based company analyzes and catalogues trends in word usage and word choice and their impact on culture.

Though the president used slightly less than four sentences per paragraph, his 19.8 words per sentence "added some difficulty for his target audience," Payack said.

He singled out this sentence from Obama as unfortunate: "That is why just after the rig sank, I assembled a team of our nation's best scientists and engineers to tackle this challenge -- a team led by Dr. Steven Chu, a Nobel Prize-winning physicist and our nation's secretary of energy."

Really?

That's why Chris Matthews, Keith Olbermann and a whole litany of media types panned the speech?



Matthews did post-graduate work in Economics. Olbermann graduated from Cornell. So the speech was over their heads?

Those are some of the Administration's biggest media supporters, and they panned the speech because it contained nothing really new and nothing we hadn't already heard in the last 57 days. I'm not a fan of either Olbermann or Matthews, but this speech was panned across the board by people of all kinds of educational backgrounds - including those who attended Ivy League universities.

Maybe it wasn't so much how he said it but what he said - or didn't say?

You know - maybe it was the content of the speech that upset so many people.

This isn't about the audience's inability to understand the President. It is that the President's speech was lacking on the specifics and general policies that will help get the oil spill under control and make sure that BP does everything within its power to stop the flow of oil into the Gulf.

The speech was ineffective because the President wasn't offering anything that we haven't already heard from the Administration through its multiple sources.

Photo and Caption of the Day

The Los Angeles Times has a story up about President Obama's speech last night, and includes the following photo and caption that are top notch.

The caption reads: "Gov. Charlie Christ checks a Florida beach for signs of oil".

Really? That's what he's checking for right there? He's apparently checking for oil on the backside of the ladies as they saunter into the ocean in barely there bikinis.

For that, we've got the caption and photo of the day.

What A Boob Job

The media is busy asking the real tough questions these days.

Has Sarah Palin gotten breast implants? The questions began surfacing following her appearance at the Belmont Stakes in New York and appeared to show a curvier than usual Palin.

Really? That's what people want to know or care about?

The former Alaska Governor is busy pursuing her own agenda and is seen as a major voice of the GOP, but the media focusing on whether she's had implants gives the media a booby prize for stupidity.

There are far more important and pressing questions that they should be asking of the former governor - including how Alaska dealt with the oil companies and the situation in the Gulf, her position on various science-related subjects, or the effect of her endorsements (real or imagined) on primary races around the country.

And for the record, Palin says that they're real - and they're fabulous.

Media Comes Around To Question Runaway Prius Story

After breathlessly hyping the story of an out of control Toyota Prius that was claimed unresponsive to braking that finally stopped after a police cruiser became involved, it now appears that the facts don't quite match the claims. In fact, tests by Toyota and the NHTSA suggest that the driver, James Sikes, could not have done what he claims to have done with his Toyota Prius:

A federal probe into a Toyota Prius that took a wild ride on a San Diego County freeway last week is casting doubt on the driver's account of uncontrollable acceleration, a spokesman for a Southern California congressman said Sunday.

James Sikes called 911 during the incident and said the gas pedal in his blue 2008 Prius was stuck, causing the car to speed along Interstate 8 at more than 90 mph. Sikes, 61, brought the car to a stop about 20 minutes later with the coaching of a California Highway Patrol officer who pulled alongside him.

Sikes later said the car kept speeding while he was "laying on the brakes" during the March 8 ride.

But when investigators from the federal government and Toyota Motor Corp. who tested Sikes' car late last week pressed hard on the brake pedal and the accelerator at the same time, the Prius' gasoline engine shut down, according to a draft of a congressional memo obtained by The Times.

The draft memo was prepared by a staff member for Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Vista) who accompanied the investigators last week.

The tests of Sikes' Prius create concerns about "the veracity of the sequence of events that has been reported by Mr. Sikes," said Kurt Bardella, a spokesman for Issa.

Mike Michels, a Toyota spokesman, declined to comment on any findings from the examination of Sikes' vehicle. But he said the complex design of the hybrid Prius would cause a shutdown of the engine in the scenario Sikes described.

That response, similar to a feature known as brake override, was included in the design "to protect the hybrid system from overload and damage," Michels said.

"In essence, if the accelerator pedal was depressed for any reason, whether it was stuck or your foot was on it, and you apply the brakes with moderate to heavy force, it would shut down the engine," Michels said. "Knowing what we know about how the vehicle is designed and reading the accounts in the media of the incident in San Diego, we're puzzled."

Some Prius models are among millions of Toyota vehicles recalled since late last year because of reported acceleration problems. Sikes has said he received a recall notice but his car hadn't yet been repaired.

Meanwhile, media outlets including Fox have started peering into the driver's background, and it turns out that he had a checkered history. Perhaps he thought this might be a payday? He's gone on the record claiming otherwise, but who knows what he was really thinking.

What it also means is that Toyota might start reclaiming some goodwill with the public - seeing that there was a veritable feeding frenzy of bad news about Toyota and the recall over claims of sudden acceleration and that the company didn't go about handling the matter properly and promptly.

Mind you that the media originally reported the story without fail repeating the statements made by Sikes unquestioningly.

New 9/11 Photos Released and Media Doesn't Know What They Are

New photos have been released of the 9/11 attacks as a result of a Freedom of Information Act request. The photos were taken by the Det. Greg Semendinger of the NYPD from on board a helicopter circling the doomed World Trade Center. They provide a unique look at the towers from a vantage not previously seen.

My problem is that the captions associated with the images are just flat out wrong.

The first photo shows the aftermath of the first collapsed WTC tower and the fires burning in the North Tower. The third photo shows the North tower (2WTC) collapsing, but it claims that the building was imploding. That's simply not the case. You can tell that the South Tower (1WTC) had already collapsed due to the smoke and ash spreading throughout Lower Manhattan resulting from the first collapse and by the fact that it simply isn't where it should be in the photo. The fourth photo and 11th photo repeats the claim that the tower imploded - when it was collapsed due to the planes. The word usage is more than likely to be picked up by conspiracy nuts who think that the buildings were purposefully demolished for some nefarious purpose rather than the actual cause for the collapse - the al Qaeda terrorists who purposefully rammed jet planes into the Twin Towers, which collapsed from all the damage done to key structural members.

Smoke and ash aren't coming from the burning towers in this photo. The Twin Towers are already gone.

What these captions show is that whoever was responsible for assembling the photos for publication had no clue what they were actually witnessing. That's incompetence.