My response to NeedToKnow

Some anonymous critic wrote a blog post attacking me over a post I made regarding my current battle with severe depression.

Here's my response: Dear Anonymous Critic.

The original post is pretty good, if I do say so myself - My tussle with severe depression - the story so far. Please check it out.

Christmas openings and closings in Toronto

Your comprehensive guide from ctvtoronto.ca to what’s happening, or not, happening in Toronto over the Christmas break.

Visit me at 'BillDoskoch.ca'

I have stopped using my old blog. My new one is BillDoskoch.ca.

Please stop by!

An account of life inside a CIA black prison

The CIA has been operating a series of black prisons around the world to better interrogate the world's worst terrorists while safely hidden from prying eyes.

Human Rights Watch has issued a report calling on the Bush administration to come clean on what happened to everyone who went through that mill.

An excerpt from the Washington Post story:

On his last day in CIA custody, Marwan Jabour, an accused al-Qaeda paymaster, was stripped naked, seated in a chair and videotaped by agency officers. Afterward, he was shackled and blindfolded, headphones were put over his ears, and he was given an injection that made him groggy. Jabour, 30, was laid down in the back of a van, driven to an airstrip and put on a plane with at least one other prisoner.

His release from a secret facility in Afghanistan on June 30, 2006, was a surprise to Jabour -- and came just after the Supreme Court rejected the Bush administration's assertion that the Geneva Conventions do not apply to prisoners like him.

Jabour had spent two years in "black sites" -- a network of secret internment facilities the CIA operated around the world. His account of life in that system, which he described in three interviews with The Washington Post, offers an inside view of a clandestine world that held far more prisoners than the 14 men President Bush acknowledged and had transferred out of CIA custody in September.

"There are now no terrorists in the CIA program," the president said, adding that after the prisoners held were determined to have "little or no additional intelligence value, many of them have been returned to their home countries for prosecution or detention by their governments."

But Jabour's experience -- also chronicled by Human Rights Watch, which yesterday issued a report on the fate of former "black site" detainees -- often does not accord with the portrait the administration has offered of the CIA system, such as the number of people it held and the threat detainees posed. Although 14 detainees were publicly moved from CIA custody to the detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, scores more have not been publicly identified by the U.S. government, and their whereabouts remain secret. Nor has the administration acknowledged that detainees such as Jabour, considered so dangerous and valuable that their detentions were kept secret, were freed.

After 28 months of incarceration, Jabour -- who was described by a counterterrorism official in the U.S. government as "a committed jihadist and a hard-core terrorist who was intent on doing harm to innocent people, including Americans" -- was released eight months ago. U.S. intelligence and counterterrorism officials confirmed his incarceration and that he was held in Pakistan and Afghanistan. They would not discuss conditions inside black sites or the treatment of any detainee.

A House in Islamabad

By Jabour's account, and that of U.S. intelligence officials, his entrance into the black-sites program began in May 2004. In interviews, he said he was muscled out of a car as it pulled inside the gates of a secluded villa in the Pakistani capital of Islamabad.

In the week before his arrival, Jabour said, Pakistani intelligence officers had beaten, abused and burned him at a jailhouse in Lahore, where he was arrested. There two female American interrogators also questioned him and told him he would be rich if he cooperated and would vanish for life if he refused. He said he was later blindfolded and driven four hours north to the villa in a wealthy residential neighborhood.

The house in Islamabad, which U.S. intelligence officials say was jointly run by the CIA and Pakistani intelligence, had been outfitted with jail cells. When Jabour arrived, he saw as many as 20 other detainees, including the 16-year-old son of an Egyptian sheik, who had been captured in Pakistan. Dozens of al-Qaeda suspects swept up in the years after Sept. 11, 2001, have been through the house, according to accounts by former prisoners and U.S. intelligence officials with knowledge of the facility.

Jabour spent five weeks there, chained to a wall and prevented from sleeping more than a few hours at a time. He said he was beaten nightly by Pakistani guards after hours of questions from U.S. interrogators. Then he and others were whisked off to CIA-run sites. Some sites were in Eastern Europe; Jabour went to one in Afghanistan. Interrogators -- whom he described as Americans in their late 20s and early 30s -- told Jabour he would never see his three children again.

Human Rights Watch has identified 38 people who may have been held by the CIA and remain unaccounted for. Intelligence officials told The Post that the number of detainees held in such facilities over nearly five years remains classified but is higher than 60. Their whereabouts have not been publicly disclosed.

What's the point of a sorority if you let in undesirables?

From the NYT:

When a psychology professor at DePauw University (in Greencastle, Ind.) surveyed students, they described one sorority as a group of “daddy’s little princesses” and another as “offbeat hippies.” The sisters of Delta Zeta were seen as “socially awkward.”

Worried that a negative stereotype of the sorority was contributing to a decline in membership that had left its Greek-columned house here half empty, Delta Zeta’s national officers interviewed 35 DePauw members in November, quizzing them about their dedication to recruitment. They judged 23 of the women insufficiently committed and later told them to vacate the sorority house.

The 23 members included every woman who was overweight. They also included the only black, Korean and Vietnamese members. The dozen students allowed to stay were slender and popular with fraternity men -- conventionally pretty women the sorority hoped could attract new recruits. Six of the 12 were so infuriated they quit.

“Virtually everyone who didn’t fit a certain sorority member archetype was told to leave,” said Kate Holloway, a senior who withdrew from the chapter during its reorganization.

Here's hoping the six conventionally pretty white women who stayed will meet like-minded, conventionally handsome fraternity men, and that they  go on to create the foundations of a master race together -- maybe even come up with a final solution for the socially awkward.

The Bagram bombing

How much are we to make of the fact that a Taliban suicide bomber blew himself outside the Bagram air base in Afghanistan while U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney was safe inside?

This NYT analysis suggests it may symbolize American worries about a Taliban and al Qaeda resurgence in Afghanistan.

An excerpt:

American officials insisted that the importance of the attack, by a single suicide bomber who blew himself up a mile away from where the vice president was staying, was primarily symbolic. It was more successful at grabbing headlines and filling television screens with a scene of carnage than at getting anywhere near Mr. Cheney.

But the strike nonetheless demonstrated that Al Qaeda and the Taliban appear stronger and more emboldened in the region than at any time since the American invasion of the country five years ago, and since the Bush administration claimed to have decimated much of their middle management. And it fed directly into the debate over who is to blame.

The leaders with whom Mr. Cheney met on his mission to Pakistan and Afghanistan have appeared increasingly incapable of controlling the chaos, and have pointed fingers at one another.

Mr. Cheney said the attack was a reminder that terrorists seek “to question the authority of the central government,” and argued that it underscored the need for a renewed American effort.

His critics, on the other hand, said the strike was another reminder of how Iraq had diverted the Bush administration from finishing the job in Afghanistan.

Keeping the lights on in Afghanistan

The Kajaki dam, once it gets fully up to speed, could provide electricity for another two million Afghans. Don't think the Taliban don't know that.

Some excerpts from the BBC story:

The plaque bearing the American eagle says it was built in 1975 - the hydro-electric power station was donated at a time when Cold War nations were pouring money into Afghanistan to buy support at the crossroads of Asia.

And working hard to keep it running is a determined man with a long beard, who has been here since the year after the turbines started turning.

Engineer Sayeed Rasul pointed to the huge gap between the two round power generators: "Turbine one needs repairs and turbine three is working well and when turbine two arrives we will be able to generate much more power," he said.

"We have only one power station in southern Afghanistan and that is Kajaki power station.

"When we have all three turbines working it will be a very big help for us and Afghanistan and our people."  ...

The Taleban know how significant the project's success would be - jobs for locals, electricity for southern Afghanistan.

They are likely to use all the insurgent tactics they can to stop it succeeding - the Kajaki Dam will be a good litmus test in the coming months of how the mission is going.

Bush to talk tough on terror with Pakistan ...

From the NYT:

President Bush has decided to send an unusually tough message to one of his most important allies, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, the president of Pakistan, warning him that the newly Democratic Congress could cut aid to his country unless his forces become far more aggressive in hunting down operatives with Al Qaeda, senior administration officials say.

The decision came after the White House concluded that General Musharraf is failing to live up to commitments he made to Mr. Bush during a visit here in September. General Musharraf insisted then, both in private and public, that a peace deal he struck with tribal leaders in one of the country’s most lawless border areas would not diminish the hunt for the leaders of Al Qaeda and the Taliban or their training camps.

Now, American intelligence officials have concluded that the terrorist infrastructure is being rebuilt, and that while Pakistan has attacked some camps, its overall effort has flagged.

“He’s made a number of assurances over the past few months, but the bottom line is that what they are doing now is not working,” one senior administration official who deals often with South Asian issues said late last week. “The message we’re sending to him now is that the only thing that matters is results.”

And Pakistan is fed up with Dubya (and Karzai, and NATO, and ...)

The Toronto Star's Haroon Siddiqui with Pakistan's side of the story on the current situation in Afghanistan.

An excerpt:

The assertions of Pakistani involvement have been repeated so often they have become part of the received wisdom of many Canadian politicians, editorial writers and pundits as well. I do not know and have not been able to ascertain whether Pakistan is guilty or not. But, given the track record of those making the allegations, we should be skeptical.

In the circumstances, it is useful to know what the Pakistanis, from President Pervez Musharraf down, have been saying.

Pakistan cannot possibly fully control the 2,400-kilometre border, most of it uninhabited terrain. "If the U.S. cannot stop infiltration from Mexico, how do you expect us to control our border with Afghanistan that's mostly desolate and mountainous?" pleaded Tariq Azim, minister of information, in an interview in Islamabad, the capital.

Pakistan has done more in battling terrorism in the neighbourhood than any other nation. It has deployed 80,000 troops along the Afghan border, double the entire American and NATO contingent in Afghanistan, and has lost more than 700 soldiers, more than double the casualty count of all the allies.

It has helped arrest dozens of Al Qaeda and Taliban operatives, in both Afghanistan and Pakistan. Musharraf: "Tell me how many Taliban leaders have been caught in Afghanistan. Name me one."

The Taliban do have sympathizers among their 15-million fellow-Pushtuns in Pakistan and among the 2.6 million Afghan Pushtun refugees living in Pakistan. But the main problem lies in Afghanistan, because of widespread corruption, opium production and the incompetence of the American and NATO forces, which have failed to bring security and economic development to the population. "We don't deny that Taliban come and go but that's not the entire truth," Maj. Gen. Shaukat Sultan, spokesperson for Musharraf, told me. "If 25 per cent of the problem lies on our side, 75 per cent lies on that side."

Ah, the Oscars!

So Martin Scorsese finally wins an Oscar for Mean Streets, Taxi Driver, Raging Bull, The King of Comedy and Goodfellas! Woo-hoo!! :)

About time!

While I'm happy for Scorcese, The Departed winning best picture was essentially a show-me-the-money award in addition to payback for all the Oscars Scorsese should have won, but didn't. The film grossed about US$129 million, better than the other four nominees.

Personally, I liked Infernal Affairs, the Hong Kong crime drama on which The Departed was based, much better. The Departed was certainly competent, but had a rote feel to it. While I periodically revisit Scorsese crime classics like Goodfellas, I can't see myself doing the same with The Departed.

And as far as best director goes, Paul Greengrass of United 93 and Stephen Frears of The Queen would have been legitimate winners too, but as I've said, I think Scorsese won as much for his previous work as this current entry.

For me, the two best films of 2006 were Pan's Labyrinth and Children of Men.

That being said, I've seen The Lives of Others, which won for best foreign film, and it's an excellent movie in its own right.

And Pan did pick up three Oscars, which has me sad that Children didn't get any recognition -- even though that says nothing of substance about the film's excellence.

While the environment is an obvious hobby horse for me, I don't know if I'm down with the pick of An Inconvenient Truth as best documentary (Melissa Etheridge won best original song for I Need To Wake Up, which accompanies the doc).

Personally, I think Jesus Camp may have been a better film, and Iraq in Fragments has moments of pure cinematic poetry within it.

However, climate change is the issue du jour, and this was a nice, safe political statement for Hollywood to make.

Now, Helen Mirren as best actress for The Queen; Forest Whitaker as best actor for The Last King of Scotland? Saw both films, can't argue with either choice. Both have been fine actors throughout their careers, and both deserve some recognition.

Alan Arkin as best supporting actor? I dunno. Best supporting over-actor, maybe.

As far as the speeches go, I left work about 11:30 p.m., but I think they have to cut them down to 30 seconds. Still w-a-a-a-a-y too much mumbling about thanking everybody and their dog and not enough about anything that is of the slightest interest to people outside the business. These people are supposed to be the cream of show biz, for God's sake! Captivate us!! :)

For the purely technical categories (sound editing), why bother? Why not televise the Plumbies, the plumbing industry's (fictional) annual awards show? Could that be less dull?

Ellen DeGeneres as host? Not bad, but too low-key.  The show, from what I saw, could have used a few more amps in its energy level.

Anyway, enough from me. Here's a link to CTV.ca's Oscar's coverage, for a full, heapin' helpin' of Oscar-tality.

Comedy Central: The serious book channel

From the NYT:

Since when did microlending, global poverty, constitutional law and civil wars in Africa become topics for frank discussion on fake-news comedy shows?

Publishers say that particularly for the last six months, “The Daily Show” and its spinoff, “The Colbert Report,” which has on similarly wonky authors, like the former White House official David Kuo, have become the most reliable venues for promoting weighty books whose authors would otherwise end up on “The Early Show” on CBS looking like they showed up at the wrong party.

(Nobel Peace Prize winner Muhammad) Yunus’s appearance gave a jump-start to his national press tour and sent his rank on the online bookseller Amazon soaring, said Susan Weinberg, who is the publisher of PublicAffairs. “It was our pièce de résistance,” Ms. Weinberg said. “It had a huge impact on the book.”

Tony Fox, a spokesman for Comedy Central, said that though “The Daily Show” has been on the air since 1996, the number of authors featured has increased significantly in the last five years.

Authors are treated to a fairly straight conversation with Mr. Stewart, but Stephen Colbert, who remains in character as a Bill O’Reilly-type commentator, can be a more challenging interviewer who forces the author to play along with his schtick. “It’s a different experience,” Ms. Weinberg said wryly.

The End of Faith/Jesus Camp/American Fascists

I've recently read the Sam Harris book The End of Faith, just finished watching the documentary Jesus Camp and am about one-third the way through Chris Hedges' American Fascists.

They work well as a trilogy.

The End of Faith is basically an attack on religion even as it acknowledges the need for spirituality. Harris particularly takes his rhetorical broadaxe to Christianity and Islam. He is especially frustrated with religious moderates who tolerate religious fanaticism (CBC's Tapestry interviewed him on Nov. 5/06).

"The first is their mode of discourse, that they don't want faith itself criticized ... (which) really provides immense cover for religious fundamentalism and religious extremism," he said in that interview.

They don't see the link between faith and violence, he said. "The religious moderate ... because his beliefs really don't commit him to anything very concrete in this life, really loses sight of the fact that millions and millions of religious believers believe in God with much more certainty than that, and expect paradise for dying under the right circumstances."

In the United States, millions of Christians "quite literally expect to be raptured into the sky by Jesus so they can witness a holy genocide that is going to inaugurate the end of human history," he said.

"These beliefs really do commit people to, I argue, behaviours that are totally maladaptive and they prevent people from making the types of compromises and decisions that we need to create a durable future for ourselves as a civilization."

Veteran visitors to this blog might remember my Jan. 26 post Global Warming and the Second Coming, about a Washington state father's crusade against showing the Oscar-nominated An Inconvenient Truth in his daughter's school. An excerpt:

"No you will not teach or show that propagandist Al Gore video to my child, blaming our nation -- the greatest nation ever to exist on this planet -- for global warming," (Frosty) Hardison wrote in an e-mail to the Federal Way School Board. The 43-year-old computer consultant is an evangelical Christian who says he believes that a warming planet is "one of the signs" of Jesus Christ's imminent return for Judgment Day.

Let's segue to Jesus Camp.

Early on in this documentary co-directed by Heidi Ewing and Rachel Grady, we see two young boys watching TV at their home in St. Robert, Missouri, where they are home-schooled by mom.

On the TV, an Indiana Jones-looking actor asks rhetorically: "Was it an explosion? Did we come from a gob of goo?"

A cartoon character adds: "It has been said we are the result of an explosion. Is this 'true'? Is this 'scientific'?" and then adds, without irony, "... or is it just based on a belief?"

The boys are called into the kitchen for homework. The textbook is "Exploring Creation With Physical Science."

Mom reads the following out loud: "One popular thing to note in the United States in the past few years is that the summers in the United States have been very warm. As a result, global warming must be real. What's wrong with this reasoning?"

Levi, who hopes to be a preacher, says, "It's only gone up 0.6 degrees."

"Yes, it's not really a problem, is it?" replies mom.

Levi opines that he doesn't think it's going to "hurt us."

"It's a huge political issue, global warming. And that's why it's really important for you to understand," says mom.

Levi asks about evolution and creationism.

"If you look at creationism, you realize it's the only possible answer to all the questions," mom said.

She then says: "Did you get to the part where it says science doesn't really prove anything? It's really interesting when you look at it that way."

The film slips in the nugget that 75 per cent of those home-schooled in the United States are evangelical Christians.

"Why are kids taught that global warming doesn't exist?" asks Air America host Mike Papantonio. "'Look, rape this world, rape this Earth. It doesn't matter because we're not here for very long. Christ is coming to take us away from Earth. So cut down our trees, use all of our oil, take advantage of everything the earth has to offer .' ... you want to shake them and you want to say, 'what is it you are not understanding about the fundamentals of Christianity?'"

Enter American Fascists.

Author Chris Hedges, who attended the Harvard Divinity School, starts by quoting Umberto Eco's 14 elements of Ur or Eternal fascism. Number four is "The critical spirit makes distinctions, and to distinguish is a sign of modernism. In modern culture, the scientific community praises disagreement as a way to improve knowledge. For Ur-Fascism, disagreement is treason."

Hedges notes that many in the Christian faith are "selective literalists" who cherry-pick from among the Bible's many contradictory passages, with those on the right leaning towards the most bloodthirsty interpretations. He appears to be on Harris's side with respects to criticizing religious moderates. "... Until the Christian churches wade into the debate, these biblical passages will be used by bigots and despots to give sacred authority to their calls to subjugate or eradicate the enemies of God. ... The steadfast refusal by churches to challenge the canonical authority of these passages means these churches share some of the blame."

The most malignant branch of the Christian right, for Hedges, are the Dominionists. "Dominionism takes its name from Genesis 1:26-31, in which God gives human beings 'dominion' over all creation," he says.

Dominionists seek political power and seek to make the United States a theocratic country. They probably comprise about seven to 12.6 per cent of the U.S. population  (about 25 per cent of Americans are evangelical Christians).

Hedges makes the point that the evangelical community is a diverse one, ranging from those who believe God wants Christians to be rich to those who eschew politics and focus on spiritual renewal. But he still thinks a major crisis could provide the opening the Dominionists need to make a move.

The book talks about why evangelical churches are successful, and looks at the recruiting tactics they use, which aren't really different than those of any successful cult.

And when you've read that, watch Jesus Camp and watch Pastor Becky Fischer work the kids.

“Extreme liberals who look at this should be quaking in their boots,” she declares towards the film's end.

Quite so.

Addendum

Salon talked to the filmmakers back in September.

If you go to the Kids In Ministry website, they promote the sale of the film. From the blurb:

Jesus Camp, the Oscar nominated documentary that has America talking, features Kids in Ministry International and it's founder Becky Fischer along with the most amazing children who are 100% sold out to the Lord Jesus Christ and are not ashamed to say so. As Bill O'Reilly of the O'Reilly factor said about the film, "Hollywood doesn't like seeing kids worship God." And, though secular viewers cannot relate to or understand what they see, passionate faith and worship by children is exactly what you experience in this film. And, yes, they WILL change America and the world!

There are comments about the film available there.

There is also a section dealing with questions about the film, such as "Are you raising Christian terrorists or another Hitler Youth Movement?"

An excerpt of Fischer's answer:

This is probably the most frustrating and exasperating part of this film for me. This is the conclusion people are coming to when they see the trailer, and I have to say that if I was not a believer in Christ and I saw nothing but the trailer, I would probably come away with the same impression.

But any born again Christian should be able to read between the lines and know there is absolutely no truth to this at all, and I hope other discerning individuals will as well.

There are many scriptures in the Bible that use terminology like "warfare," "weapons," "armor"  and so on. When born again Christians speak of warfare they mean "spiritual" warfare. This is a war of ideologies and spiritual issues, and not a physical war that is fought with guns and bombs. Christians do believe they are in a cultural war for the lives and souls of people worldwide, and particularly for the minds and hearts of our children and youth.

There's a clip in the trailer that shows me with my arms raised up and I'm shouting, "This means war!" That came during a prayer time at the end of one of our services where I spoke on the battle we wage against sin and temptation we fight on a daily basis. We had spoken about the challenges of keeping our minds and our hearts pure in a world that throws all kinds of mental and visual trash at us all the time. But out of context it could be taken to mean anything!

The unfortunate thing is that right now the secular world has no other grid to go by than what is happening in the war on terror, and the terrorists themselves sending their young out to blow themselves up and take as many other people with them as they can at the same time. But that has nothing to do with the way Christians think of spiritual warfare. The weapons Christians use is prayer, the Word of God [Bible], and so on.

On the other hand, Fischer does make comparisons with Islamic youth who do go on to commit suicide bombings and whatnot. "I want to see young people who are as committed to Jesus Christ as the young people are to the cause of Islam. I want to see them as radically laying down their lives for the Gospel as they are over in Pakistan, in Israel, in Palestine, in all those different places."

Her definition of war is not that dissimilar from the Islamic notion of jihad, or struggle. Jihad can have multiple levels of meaning. It can mean the internal struggle to live a virtuous life, or it can mean physical battle against the perceived enemies of Islam.

At one point in the film, Fischer starts talking about Harry Potter (?!?!). "Warlocks are enemies of God. And I don't care what kind of hero they are, they are enemies of God. And had it been in the Old Testament, Harry Potter would have been put to death."

Becky sounded like she was longing for the good old days.

At another point, some unidentified male adult with a vaguely South African accent asks the kids: "How many of you want to be those who would give up their lives for Jesus?" Much wild screaming.

Now, there's a subtle difference between those who would give their lives to serve Jesus or give up their lives for Jesus.

This guy also talked about the "enemies" in government who did things like take prayer out of schools.

I'm sorry, but when you start throwing around words like "enemy" and "war," and how killing "enemies of God" like warlocks would have been hunky dory in Old Testament days, some people might get confused.

Sam Harris devotes a large part of his book to pointing out some of the more poisonous verses in both the Koran and the Bible -- and details some of the horrible things that have been done in the service of God.

And Chris Hedges talks about how the Christian right's definition of things like "liberty" are radically different from the same term in the secular world.

For all that, the main kids in Jesus Camp seem like very nice youngsters. Based on the film, there would be no basis for calling them Hitler Youth or Christian terrorists.

However, kids do grow up. And the vision of the hard religious U.S. right that Hedges outlines sounds like a Christian version of Iran on a bad tolerance day.

For some reason, I'm moved to remember this lyrical snippet from Saturday Night Holocaust, by the Dead Kennedys:

A Hitler youth in jogging suit
Smiling face banded 'round his arm
Says, 'Line up, you've got work to do
We need dog food for the poor'

The one thing Jello Biafra might want to add, if the worst-case scenario of Hedges ever came true, is a cross around the neck.

Global warming and food -- or the lack thereof

The Globe and Mail's Martin Mittlestaedt on why some experts think food supply might be among the first major casualties of global warming.

An excerpt:

That's the view of a small but influential group of agricultural experts who are increasingly worried that global warming will trigger food shortages long before it causes better known but more distant threats, such as rising sea levels that flood coastal cities.

The scale of agriculture's vulnerability to global warming was highlighted late last year when the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR), an umbrella organization representing 15 of the world's top crop research centres, issued an astounding estimate of the impact of climate change on a single crop, wheat, in one of the world's major breadbaskets.

Researchers using computer models to simulate the weather patterns likely to exist around 2050 found that the best wheat-growing land in the wide arc of fertile farmland stretching from Pakistan through Northern India and Nepal to Bangladesh would be decimated. Much of the area would become too hot and dry for the crop, placing the food supply of 200 million people at risk.

"The impacts on agriculture in developing countries, and particularly on countries that depend on rain-fed agriculture, are likely to be devastating," says Dr. Louis Verchot, principal ecologist at the World Agroforestry Centre in Nairobi, Kenya.

Wheat, the source of one-fifth of the world's food, isn't the only crop that could be clobbered by climate change. Cereals and corn production in Africa are at risk, as is the rice crop in much of India and Southeast Asia, according to Dr. Verchot.

In a cruel twist of fate, most of the hunger resulting from global warming is likely to be felt by those who haven't caused the problem: the people in developing countries. At the same time, it may be a boon to agriculture in richer northern countries more responsible for the greenhouse gas emissions driving climate instability.

"With climate change, the agricultural areas in Canada, Russia and Europe will expand, while the areas suited for agriculture in the tropics will decline," Dr. Verchot says. "Basically, the situation is that those who are well off now will be better off in the future, and those who are in problems will have greater problems."

U.S. buildup against Iran continues

The Guardian reports that the U.S. could be in a position to attack Iran's nuclear sites by this spring, although an attack isn't likely until early in 2008, just before Dubya leaves office.

Some excerpts:

Neo-conservatives, particularly at the Washington-based American Enterprise Institute, are urging Mr Bush to open a new front against Iran. So too is the vice-president, Dick Cheney.

The state department and the Pentagon are opposed, as are Democratic congressmen and the overwhelming majority of Republicans. The sources said Mr Bush had not yet made a decision.

The Bush administration insists the military build-up is not offensive but aimed at containing Iran and forcing it to make diplomatic concessions. The aim is to persuade Tehran to curb its suspect nuclear weapons programme and abandon ambitions for regional expansion. ...

Robert Gates, the new US defence secretary, said yesterday: "I don't know how many times the president, secretary [of state Condoleezza] Rice and I have had to repeat that we have no intention of attacking Iran."

But Vincent Cannistraro, a Washington-based intelligence analyst, shared the sources' assessment that Pentagon planning was well under way. "Planning is going on, in spite of public disavowals by Gates. Targets have been selected. For a bombing campaign against nuclear sites, it is quite advanced. The military assets to carry this out are being put in place."

He added: "We are planning for war. It is incredibly dangerous."

Back to my usual blog

My bandwidth came back on Thursday. I will be posting at my usual blog: http://billdoskoch.blogware.com

Is India running out of skilled IT workers?

Despite graduating about 400,000 engineers and scientists every year, India is already starting to wonder whether it will have enough in the future to meet the demands of globalization.

An excerpt from the BBC story:

Nasscom, the Indian software industry association, estimates that by 2010, the Indian outsourcing industry could have $60bn worth of global sales, up from $23bn in 2006 - and that would still only be 10% of the potential market.

But if the industry is to triple its revenues, urgent action is needed now to increase the supply of skilled labour, Nasscom says.

It wants the government to rpovide more engineering places at university, and it has started its own scheme for an India-wide certification of IT qualifications.

Pressure on turnover

The tight labour market is already taking its toll on the industry.

The big three Indian software companies alone (Infosys, Wipro, and TCS) are looking to hire 100,000 new graduates this year, as their businesses continue to grow by 30% annually.

The problem is not so much hiring the skilled IT workers - Infosys gets 1.4 million applications a year, and can pick and choose - as retaining them after they have started.

As foreign multinationals continue to flood into India, the competition for experienced IT professionals is heating up.

Companies such as IBM Cap Gemini and Accenture, the main rivals to the Bangalore tigers, plan to transfer the bulk of their worldwide operations to India in the next few years and are desperate to hire staff.

Turnover rates at Infosys and Wipro are about 12%-15% a year - still lower than the Indian average, but rising steadily.

And to retain existing staff, Wipro has had to raise wages twice this year, by more than 20%.

Wipro's chairman, Azim Premji, says he is not worried - his company offers better opportunities than the foreign multinationals.

But industry analysts wonder whether the rising wage bill will eventually make Indian software companies uncompetitive in the world market. After all, lower labour costs are what gave them their initial advantage.

The Indian companies answer that it is their global production systems and their skills, not low wages, that give them comparative advantage.

But they are also hedging their bets.

All the Bangalore tigers have set up development centres in China, where they can employ software engineers for considerably less than they are currently paying their Indian staff.

The broiler: That most under-appreciated of kitchen appliances

The NYT's Mark Bittman on why broilers deserve respect and how to get maximum benefit from it.

The crux of his story:

If I’d told you I had an appliance that could brown like a grill, was as convenient as your oven, and cooked most food in less than 10 minutes, you’d buy it. But you don’t need to.

Campaigning in a YouTube world

This NYT story talks about the pitfalls that the new media might pose for pols, with a particular look at one Hillary Rodham Clinton.

An excerpt:

Some of the nation’s most enduring memories of Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton — memories she would happily erase — were etched on television more than a decade ago: She didn’t stay home and bake cookies in her marriage. She wasn’t “some little woman, standing by my man, like Tammy Wynette.” The headband. The hairstyles.

On Saturday, one week into her presidential campaign, the threat of a new, unflattering image surfaced: MSNBC used a microphone to capture Mrs. Clinton singing the national anthem in Des Moines. Her voice was, shall we say, off key. The recording was quickly downloaded to YouTube, the video-sharing Web site, and the Drudge Report — no friend of Mrs. Clinton — was steering readers to watch it. (By Tuesday afternoon, more than 800,000 had.)

Clinton advisers found out about the YouTube video within minutes, and their campaign war room made a calculated decision: not to respond at all. They did not want to draw news media attention to the video; nor did they want to upstage their preferred news of the day, Mrs. Clinton’s debut in Iowa.

“Senator Clinton’s candidacy is not premised on her ability to carry a tune,” said Howard Wolfson, a senior adviser and war room manager. “We did not see it as a significant threat.”

Twenty-four hours later, no news outlets had made a fuss about the video, and the Clinton team privately declared victory.

The video clip may have been trivial, but the brief episode surrounding it illustrated how visual and audio technologies like video streaming have the potential to drive political news in unexpected directions, and how White House candidates are aggressively monitoring and trying to master them.

Putting the arm on U.S. climate scientists

From CTV.ca:

U.S. scientists have been pressured to make their writings on global warming fit with the Bush administration's skepticism on the topic, a U.S. Congressional committee has been told.

A survey by the Union of Concerned Scientists found 150 climate scientists had personally experienced political interference in their work over the past five years. The survey had 279 respondents.

At least 435 incidents were recorded, representatives of the watchdog group told the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee.

"Nearly half of all respondents perceived or personally experienced pressure to eliminate the words 'climate change,' 'global warming' or other similar terms from a variety of communications," said Francesca Grifo.

2006 Afghan civilian deaths top 1,000: HRW

More than 1,000 of the 4,400 Afghans who died in conflict-related violence in 2006 were civilians, Human Rights Watch says in a new report.

An excerpt from the BBC story:

It says that the majority of the dead were killed by the Taleban or other anti-government forces.

It says more than 4,400 Afghans died in "conflict-related violence", twice as many as in 2005 and more than any year since the Taleban were ousted in 2001.

The HRW report says that UN figures show that the conflict also displaced around 15,000 families - around 80,000 people - in southern Afghanistan.

"The international security effort in Afghanistan has been hobbled by insufficient resources and the failure to effectively address the security concerns of the Afghan population," the report said.

"Taking into account Afghanistan's population and size, the 40,000 Nato and US-led coalition forces in the country are a small fraction of the security forces deployed in other recent post-conflict areas like the Balkans and East Timor.

"Many are limited by national laws to safe areas in Afghanistan or cannot act to protect ordinary Afghans adequately."

The report says that one year after pledging to improve human rights and basic security, the Afghan government and the international community have not fulfilled their objective.

Here's the HRW report.

'Soldiers of Heaven'

The Beeb with some detail on a messianic Shiite cult involved in a major gun battle in Najaf, Iraq that left at least 200 of its members dead.

An excerpt:

A young Shia leader, Dia Abdul-Zahra, had gathered hundreds of his followers, including women and children, in an encampment a few miles north of Najaf.

They were well armed and had come to believe that Abdul-Zahra - also known as Ahmed Hassan al-Yamani and Samer Abu Kamar - was the Mahdi.

According to Shia belief, the Mahdi is a Muslim messiah who disappeared hundreds of years ago and whose return will usher in an era of peace and justice before the end of time.

Abdul-Zahra and his followers regarded the religious leadership in Najaf as illegitimate.

Iraqi officials say their extraordinary plan was to enter the city in the garb of pilgrims, declare that the Mahdi had returned, and assassinate Ayatollah Sistani and other senior clerics.

All this was to happen on Ashura, the holiest day in the Shia calendar.

Instead, the Iraqi authorities seem to have had a tip-off. According to their account, they attacked the encampment and foiled the plot.

Now, there's been rumours the soldiers have been affiliated with everyone from al Qaeda (who are hardcore Sunnis) to Baathists (Saddam's old crowd).

Iraq's Shia-led government may have an interest in promoting the idea of such an unholy alliance.

It may want to deflect attention from the embarrassing fact that the majority Shia community is riven with factions and divisions.

The authorities may also have exaggerated their own military success.

The signs are that they underestimated the strength of the Soldiers of Heaven and had to call for urgent American air support.

American newspapers pull back from foreign coverage

If you want to be a foreign correspondent for a major U.S. newspaper, you might be 20 years too late. The business people say those resources would be better off spent on local coverage.

An excerpt from the Washington Post column by Fred Hiatt:

Journalist Jill Carroll, studying foreign news coverage for a report published by the Shorenstein Center at Harvard University last fall, found that the number of U.S. newspaper foreign correspondents declined from 188 in 2002 to 141 last year. (If you include the Wall Street Journal, which publishes editions in Europe and Asia, the decline was from 304 to 249.)

I find it disheartening that a fine newspaper such as the Globe would feel compelled to diminish itself in this way. But maybe that's the nostalgia of a dinosaur. After all, there are some very smart business people who see no harm in newspapers cutting back on foreign reporting.

Jack Welch, for example, the former chairman of General Electric Co. who has expressed interest in buying the Globe, said earlier this month on CNBC, "I'm not sure local papers need to cover Iraq, need to cover global events. They can be real local papers. And franchise, purchase from people very willing to sell you their wire services that will give you coverage."

Brian Tierney, who bought the Philadelphia Inquirer last year, expressed similar views in a November interview with The Post's Howard Kurtz. "We don't need a Jerusalem bureau," he said. "What we need are more people in the South Jersey bureau."

"I don't see us sending 25 people to do me-too coverage of Katrina," Tierney went on to say. "I can get what's going on in Iraq online. What I can't get is what's happening in this region."

Now, if papers staff fewer foreign bureaus, is that being made up by using more international wire copy? Nope.

After Sept. 11, there was nearly universal acknowledgment that Americans would be better off if we knew more about the world. Yet by 2004 the percentage of articles related to foreign affairs that American newspapers published on their front pages had dropped to "the lowest total in any year we have ever studied," according to a report by the Project for Excellence in Journalism and Rick Edmonds of the Poynter Institute. (It was 14 percent, down from 21 percent in 2003 and 27 percent in both 1987 and 1977.)

I remember listening to a speech by the Associated Press's Kathy Gannon, who covered Afghanistan and Pakistan for the service. She spoke to some U.S. editors in the summer of 2001. One of them asked her, "why should we care what goes on there?" Her silent response? "You'll find out."

Obama target of first 2008 false news frenzy

This NYT story looks at the genesis of a story designed to smear Sen. Barack Obama, candidate for the 2008 Democratic presidential nomination, over something that allegedly happened when he was seven.

An excerpt:

Jeffrey T. Kuhner, whose Web site published the first anonymous smear of the 2008 presidential race, is hardly the only editor who will not reveal his reporters’ sources. What sets him apart is that he will not even disclose the names of his reporters.

But their anonymity has not stopped them from making an impact. In the last two weeks, Mr. Kuhner’s Web site, Insight, the last remnant of a defunct conservative print magazine owned by the Unification Church led by the Rev. Sun Myung Moon, was able to set off a wave of television commentary, talk-radio chatter, official denials, investigations by journalists around the globe and news media self-analysis that has lasted 11 days and counting.

The controversy started with a quickly discredited Jan. 17 article on the Insight Web site asserting that the presidential campaign of Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton was preparing an accusation that her rival, Senator Barack Obama, had covered up a brief period he had spent in an Islamic religious school in Indonesia when he was 6.

(Other news organizations have confirmed Mr. Obama’s descriptions of the school as a secular public school. Both senators have denounced the report, and there is no evidence that Mrs. Clinton’s campaign planned to spread those accusations.)

In an interview Sunday, Mr. Kuhner, 37, said he still considered the article, which he said was meant to focus on the thinking of the Clinton campaign, to be “solid as solid can be.” But he declined to say whether he had learned the identity of his reporter’s sources, and so perhaps only that reporter knows the origin of the article’s anonymous quotes and assertions. Its assertions about Mr. Obama resemble rumors passed on without evidence in e-mail messages that have been widely circulated over the last several weeks.

The Clinton-Obama article followed a series of inaccurate or hard-to-verify articles on Insight and its predecessor magazine about politics, the Iraq war or the Bush administration, including a widely discussed report on the Insight Web site that President Bush’s relationship with his father was so strained that they were no longer speaking to each other about politics.

The Washington Times, which is also owned by the Unification Church, but operates separately from the Web site, quickly disavowed the article. Its national editor sent an e-mail message to staff members under the heading “Insight Strikes Again” telling them to “make sure that no mention of any Insight story” appeared in the paper, and another e-mail message to its Congressional correspondent instructing him to clarify to Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Obama that The Washington Times had nothing to do with the article on the Web site.

“Some of the editors here get annoyed when Insight is identified as a publication of The Washington Times,” said Wesley Pruden, editor in chief of The Washington Times.

And in an interview, John Moody, a senior vice president at Fox News, said its commentators had erred by citing the Clinton-Obama report. “The hosts violated one of our general rules, which is know what you are talking about,” Mr. Moody said. “They reported information from a publication whose accuracy we didn’t know.”

Mr. Kuhner’s ability to ignite a news media brush fire nonetheless illustrates how easily dubious and politically charged information can spread through the constant chatter of cable news commentary, talk radio programs and political Web sites. And at the start of a campaign with perhaps a dozen candidates hiring “research directors” to examine one another, the Insight episode may be a sign of what is to come.

Cutting through the shit about eating

Writing in the NYT magazine, Michael Pollan has the following advice:

Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.

That, more or less, is the short answer to the supposedly incredibly complicated and confusing question of what we humans should eat in order to be maximally healthy.

He went on to take some shots at some key players as to why the act of eating hs become so incredibly complicated and confusing:

The story of how the most basic questions about what to eat ever got so complicated reveals a great deal about the institutional imperatives of the food industry, nutritional science and — ahem — journalism, three parties that stand to gain much from widespread confusion surrounding what is, after all, the most elemental question an omnivore confronts. Humans deciding what to eat without expert help — something they have been doing with notable success since coming down out of the trees — is seriously unprofitable if you’re a food company, distinctly risky if you’re a nutritionist and just plain boring if you’re a newspaper editor or journalist. (Or, for that matter, an eater. Who wants to hear, yet again, “Eat more fruits and vegetables”?) And so, like a large gray fog, a great Conspiracy of Confusion has gathered around the simplest questions of nutrition — much to the advantage of everybody involved. Except perhaps the ostensible beneficiary of all this nutritional expertise and advice: us, and our health and happiness as eaters.

Perky: The duck that refused to die

Perky got shot by a hunter in Florida. The hunter dumped Perky's body in a fridge along with some other ducks. Two days later, the guy's wife opens up the fridge to find Perky staring back at her.

They take the duck to a vet. The vet operates. Perky flatlines twice on the operating table, but is resuscitated.

She now has a pin in her wing but is expected to recover.

More at this Beeb story.

The Great Barrier Reef a potential global warming casualty

The Age newspaper in Australia has obtained an early draft of the second installment of the IPCC fourth assessment, and it doesn't bode well for the Land Down Under.

An excerpt from the BBC story:

The Great Barrier Reef is regarded as the world's largest living organism.

It is Australia's number one tourist destination, attracting a million visitors a year, and is home to sharks, turtles and numerous brightly coloured fish. ...

It warns that the Great Barrier Reef will become "functionally extinct" because of coral bleaching - which occurs when the plant-like organisms that make up the coral die, leaving behind a white limestone skeleton.

It takes at least a decade for coral to start recovering from severe bleaching.

But the reef may not have the chance to recover, scientists warn, as temperatures continue to rise and the sea becomes more acidic. This raises the risk that the coral will die outright.

Tea with a Pakistani Taliban leader

Harood Rashid of the BBC's Urdu service recently travelled to South Waziristan and managed to obtain an interview with Mullah Baitullah Mehsud, leader of a Taliban militia there.

An excerpt:

Baitullah's private army along with other militant groups have imposed a strict Islamic code in North and parts of South Waziristan.

They run a parallel government here. Music and videos are banned while militants claim people approach them for settlement of their disputes.

With a black-dyed beard, 34-year-old Baitullah greeted us in a big room with several of his armed men beside him. We sat on a new colourful quilt spread on the ground.

Baitullah seemed a man with only jihad (holy war) on his mind. During the interview he quoted several verses from the Koran to defend his stance that foreign forces must be evicted from Islamic countries.

"Allah on 480 occasions in the Holy Koran extols Muslims to wage jihad. We only fulfil God's orders. Only jihad can bring peace to the world," he says.

The militant leader on several occasions in the past had openly admitted crossing over into Afghanistan to fight foreign troops.

"We will continue our struggle until foreign troops are thrown out. Then we will attack them in the US and Britain until they either accept Islam or agree to pay jazia (a tax in Islam for non-Muslims living in an Islamic state)."

Suicide bombers

Baitullah predicted an even bloodier year for foreign forces in Afghanistan.

"The mujahideen will carry out even more severe attacks. If they [the West] have air power we have fidayeen [suicide bombers]... They will leave dishonoured."

The militant leader, who is suffering from a chest infection, denied an American general's claim that a Taleban leader, Jalaluddin Haqqani, was present in the tribal region and was organising attacks across the border. "This is all lies. They don't have any evidence."

The militants say they don't wish to fight Pakistani security forces because it only benefits the Americans.

"[Pakistan army spokesman] Shaukat Sultan holds the key to this issue," a smiling Baitullah said when asked what they would do if Pakistan continued to bomb them.

Here's a related BBC story by Rashid: Welcome to Taleban country.

IPCC report FAQ

I prepared a backgrounder for CTV.ca on what to expect in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report expected Friday.

Oddball factoid of the night

While looking through some climate change-related photos on Monday evening, one caption for a Reuters photo claimed that 13 per cent of Americans had never heard of climate change.

It didn't say whether 12.999 per cent of Americans live in caves.

China 'fesses up on its environmental failures

From the BBC:

China is failing to make progress on improving and protecting the environment, according to a new Chinese government report.

The research ranks China among the world's worst nations - a position unchanged since 2004.

After the US, China produces the most greenhouse gases in the world.

The Chinese report, prepared by academics and government experts, ranked the country 100th out of 118 countries surveyed.

Some 30 indicators were used to measure the level of "ecological modernisation" including carbon dioxide emissions, sewage disposal rates and the safety of drinking water.

Europe's low-carbon plan going nowhere fast

Seems like only yesterday that Europe was full of brave talk about a low-carbon future (well, 18 days ago, anyways).

About the same time, Van Jolissaint, Daimler-Chrysler's chief economist, told a breakfast meeting at the Detroit auto show how he thought Europeans were being a bunch of nervous Nellies on climate change. He reserved particularly harsh words for the Stern Report, which argues it's cheaper to fight climate change now than in the future.

An excerpt from the Jan. 10 BBC story:

In response to a question from the floor, he said that global warming was a far-off risk whose magnitude was uncertain.

He said that from an economic point of view, it would be more rational to spend lots of money on today's other big problems, and only make small and limited changes in policies relating to global warming, such as a slight increase in gasoline or carbon taxes.


Airlines and factories are being urged to help cut global warming
Mr Jolissaint was particularly scathing about the Stern Report, which urged governments to take urgent action now, arguing that it would be much cheaper to act, rather than face a $10 trillion cost of climate change of not doing anything until later.

Mr Jolissaint said the report, written by a former adviser to UK Chancellor Gordon Brown, was based on dubious economics and did not include a discount rate. Until recently Sir Nicholas Stern was the second permanent secretary at the UK Treasury.

Chrysler's chief economist said his German colleagues at DaimlerChrysler's headquarters in Stuttgart and other professionals in Europe viewed global warming "with much more alarm than we do".

He called on Europeans to deal with climate change "in a step-by-step, rational way, and not play much Chicken Little", referring to the US children's story in which Chicken Little runs around in circles saying "the sky is falling".

If nothing else, Mr Jolissaint's remarks illustrate the yawning gap between mainstream opinion on climate change among the educated elites of Europe and America.

But they are also consistent with the cynical view held by some in the US environmental lobby that announcements by car companies about the future development of green vehicles are nothing more than window dressing.

The BBC followed up with a Jan. 12 story: EU plans attack on car emissions.

However, check out this Jan. 24 BBC story: EU stumbles on low-carbon road:

Environmentalists have expressed grave concern that the European Commission could be about to drop plans to ensure that new cars produce a quarter less carbon dioxide by 2012.

The Commission had been expected this week to announce plans to force car makers to meet this tough target, despite warnings from the industry that it would push up prices and put jobs at risk.

The move would have been a concrete step towards the "post-industrial revolution" the Commission called for two weeks ago, to tackle climate change.

But sharp disagreements within the Commission have led to the postponement of the announcement, and environmentalists fear the plan will not survive in its original form.

Officials say Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso still favours ambitious legislation - but green lobbyists say they have privately heard the opposite.

It's worth reading the whole story. Some very good charts and whatnot, if you're into that sort of thing -- and who isn't? :)

Davos discusses nuclear power as a least-worst option

This NYT story looks at the corporati at Davos are discussing how Europe is considering giving nuclear power a second look.

An excerpt:

At a time when industrialized countries are wrestling with how to curb carbon dioxide emissions, nuclear energy has one indisputable advantage: unlike coal, oil, natural gas, or even biological fuels, it emits no carbon dioxide. That virtue, in the view of advocates, is enough to offset its well-documented shortcomings.

“It has put nuclear back into the mix,” said Daniel C. Esty, director of the Center for Environmental Law and Policy at Yale University. “We’re seeing a new balancing of the costs and benefits.”

But being in the mix does not mean nuclear energy will shove aside fossil fuels any time soon. In a way, the revival of interest in nuclear power illustrates the lack of palatable choices to combat global warming.

Renewable energy, while growing steadily, has limitations. Windmills don’t turn when the wind isn’t blowing; solar power and geothermal energy are not yet economical enough; hydroelectric dams can be disruptive themselves.

That leaves nuclear power as a “clean” alternative to fossil fuels. It already generates one-sixth of the world’s electricity, but it fell out of favor in the West two decades ago after the Chernobyl and Three Mile Island accidents. The previous German government, in fact, pledged to shut down its last nuclear power station by 2022.

But now Germany has also committed to deep reductions in carbon dioxide emissions in the next decade, and its new chancellor, Angela Merkel, rekindled the debate over nuclear energy by saying, “We should consider what consequences it will have if we shut off our nuclear power plants.”

That comment was a reference to Europe’s increasing vulnerability as an importer of foreign fossil fuels. Just as the United States worries about disruptions in the supply of Middle East oil, Europe worries about Russia’s penchant for using its gas and oil pipelines as a political weapon.

In a recent report, Deutsche Bank declared that Germany’s energy policy was untenable. “Far from reducing carbon emissions and securing future energy supplies,” it concluded, “current policies would increase both emissions and Germany’s dependence on foreign gas imports.”

Even in the United States, which has not ordered cuts in carbon dioxide emissions, there are more voices in favor of building nuclear plants. “The question is, how do we produce enough electricity?” said James E. Rogers, the chief executive of Duke Energy Corporation, a major energy supplier. “We need to put our money on nuclear.”

Critics point out that nuclear reactors are astronomically expensive, and take a decade or more to build, even if environmental groups fail to block construction altogether.

Given the entrenched opposition in parts of Western Europe and America, some experts say that if the world does turn to nuclear power, most of the new plants will be in China, India and other developing countries.

They also point out that the issue of security cuts both ways. Building more plants may reduce a country’s reliance on imported oil and gas, but it also creates more targets for terrorist attacks. And there is the nuclear fuel cycle: North Korea and other countries are already suspected of diverting enriched uranium to try to make nuclear weapons. Those dangers would only multiply with an increase in the global demand for nuclear power.

A breathtakingly honest freelancer!

NYT public editor Byron Calame wrote about the ethics of freelance contributors in his Jan. 28 offering.

I note this sentence with a raised eyebrow:

"THE ability of The New York Times to maintain its ethical standards among its far-flung outside contributors continues to be a major concern of mine. As these freelancers fill column after column at a lower cost than full-time reporters, readers have a right to expect that editors ensure the integrity of that journalism."

However, the second-last of these grafs made me smile:

In a push in the right direction, the (Jan. 16) memo (from Craig R. Whitney and William E. Schmidt, two assistant managing editors) requires editors to ask freelancers if they are “familiar with our ethics rules” the next time each is given an assignment — and to “make it clear that continuing to contribute to The Times depends on observing those rules.” If a freelancer “deliberately disregards” the paper’s Ethical Journalism guidelines, “we stop giving assignments to that person,” the two editors warned.

So how did the freelancer conflicts on these stories escape detection before publication?

The freelancer who took the Samsung junket, John Biggs, had responded to the online ethics questionnaire for outside contributors in May, shortly after it became a requirement. “Have you accepted any free trips, junkets or press trips in the last two years?” one question asked. His negative response was accurate at that time, according to Mr. Whitney, who is also the paper’s standards editor.

After taking the October junket, primarily to write for CrunchGear.com, a blog about electronic gear, Mr. Biggs told me, he “simply forgot” about updating his ethics questionnaire response so Times editors would be aware of his conflict of interest and not assign him any Samsung stories. His editor doesn’t share his vague recollection that he mentioned Samsung’s role in his trip. In any case, comments he posted on CrunchGear on Oct. 17, the day he arrived in Seoul, make it clear to me that he understood the unethical aspect of junkets. “I’m here with Samsung,” he wrote, “suckling on the sweet teat of junket whoredom.”

Unfortunately, The Times’s online ethics questionnaire system requires updating of freelancer responses only every two years. Mr. Biggs, who in recent months has been writing brief articles almost every week for the business section, wasn’t asked to update his responses before writing the two stories about Samsung products in November.

Davos and the colour Green

BBC Online business editor Tim Weber with his take on the bouyant enthusiasm for the climate change issue among the business elite at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.

An excerpt:

... When hundreds of participants voted on what the world's most pressing issues were, a large majority said "climate change", and also found that the world was not ready to tackle it.

It's difficult to say what caused the change.

German supermodel Claudia Schiffer says that seeing Al Gore's film on climate change An Inconvenient Truth made her support the LOVE campaign, which hopes to do for climate change what Bono's Join Red initiative does for Aids in Africa.

Green issues for global leaders

As it happens, there are plenty of chief executives who also point to the former vice president's film as a turning point.

Others are more sober, with German Chancellor Angela Merkel highlighting in her speech the Stern report on the economic impact of climate change, which was commissioned by the UK government.

"It's fascinating how green issues such as climate change have gone mainstream in the past six month," says Richard Punt, a managing partner at consulting firm Deloitte.

But he also has a word of caution: "I don't know whether the discussion here in Davos is actually moving forward or whether it is stagnating."

Regardless, "there is a spirit of enthusiasm across the business community, a sea change on green issues," says Daniel Esty, director of the Yale Center for Environmental Law and Policy.

But enthusiasm alone does not solve the problem, and the bosses know it.

"It is probably too late to counter climate change," say a number of corporate leaders.

With climate change inevitable, we have three options, they say: mitigate, adapt, or suffer.

When an environmental expert argues that we will have to face up to all three options, but that it is up to us to determine the mix, many heads in the room nod in agreement.

My usual blog can be found at ...

http://www.billdoskoch.blogware.com