Andrew Sullivan raises a very interesting question, but inadvertently so, in the process of another rote excoriation of the New York Times. (It’s easy—link to their corrections page and proceed to foam at the mouth). Since Sullivan doesn’t archive his output (unlike the New York Times) I’m posting the relevant bit in full:

THE TIMES VERSUS ISRAEL: I pointed out in my New York Sun and Washington Times column today that a New York Times story yesterday reported the capital of Israel as Tel Aviv. Here’s the official correction:

An article yesterday about a man accused of having tried to hijack an El Al plane en route to Istanbul from Tel Aviv on Sunday referred incorrectly to Tel Aviv. It is not the capital of Israel; Jerusalem is.

Two things to note. If the Times’ editors need to, they can make a correction within a day. So why do they delay for weeks sometimes on factual matters that are just as simple? Second: how did someone make this mistake? This isn’t very sophisticated fact-checking. There are two explanations: the Times doesn’t even have basic reporting skills any more or ideological aversion to Israel was a part of the problem. Or both. And to think this was once the paper of record.

It’s fine for Sullivan to call Jerusalem the capital of Israel. Bloggers are meant to be opinionated. But it helps if they are rational. Which is why it’s a little rich to demand that the NYT behave in a manner befitting a “paper of record” but then insist that it treat as fact something that is the subject of a highly charged political debate.

For it is a fact that only three countries currently recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel: Israel; Costa Rica; and El Salvador. The US and every other western nation have wisely decided to delay their decision on Jerusalem—East, West, or Greater—as the capital of anything until final status talks are concluded. Hence the embassies in Tel Aviv.

In the US, Congress has repeatedly pressed Clinton and now Bush to relocate the US embassy in Jerusalem, most recently in the bill authorizing the State Department’s budget for 2003. But both presidents have made it clear that US policy remains unchanged.

The NYT did get it wrong when it called Tel Aviv the capital of Israel. The foreign embassies there might lead the shoddy journalist to assume this, when in fact their location is provisional, with a view to moving to Jerusalem as soon as they get the green light.

But it is the NYT correction that raises the interesting question. The paper has now stated, for the record shall we say, that Jerusalem is the capital of Israel. (And you’d think Sullivan would be a little more appreciative.) If newspapers are supposed to be neutral on such matters it would have sufficed to omit the two last words of the correction. If newspapers are expected to toe the line of their own government’s foreign policy it would have sufficed to omit those same two words.

Or perhaps we should expect the US paper of record to side with the foreign government on such mattters, as a matter of policy. There is one precedent that I can think of: Burma being called Burma by the US but Myanmar by the NYT.

My own take on this is that the New York Times has decided to become the newspaper of record for Costa Rica.

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“Optimism pays” are the concluding words of Bob Bartley’s going away speech, and it is certainly true he has just given us his own optimistic first take on his 30-year tenure as editor of the Wall Street Journal.

I’d like to be charitable towards this piece. All the evidence suggests that he is a genial and personable fellow, who has honorably served the Republican cause in the marketplace of ideas all these years.

But that does not mean that the ideas he fought for are any good. And sometimes, the battles he chose damaged the credibility of the Journal—as with the decade-long Whitewater/Foster conspiracy theorizing.

But nobody has a perfect track record in the harsh light of hindsight. This is why it would have been perfectly OK for his valedictory speech to have been more explicit about where he now thinks he was wrong.

Granted, on some issues it is possible to agree to disagree:

I am indifferent to the minutiae of the arms race in the 70s, and while I think mutually assured destruction worked just fine (unlike Bartley), it is not as if we had a controlled experiment to try other approaches.

Likewise about economic policy in the 80s: Supply-side economics came at the cost of unsustainably huge budget deficits that cost the Republicans a presidency. And it is a policy the republicans are not about to try again, eventhough they now have every opportunity.

But then, in the 90s, I think Bartley mishandled the entire Clinton Presidency. And he still doesn’t know it:

President Clinton’s sin was the same as President Nixon’s: not the burglary but the lies, not the sex but the lies.

Last I checked burglary was a crime but not sex, even the extramarital variety. It’s just outlandish to continue to suggest that Clinton’s crimes are anywhere near the severity of Nixon’s. And that is why the American people didn’t support Clinton’s ouster, not because

Without the public passion aroused by the [Vietnam] war, judges and journalists and opposition politicians would never have had the stomach to unseat a sitting president. In normal times, this is not something the electorate would allow. The electorate takes the optimistic view.

Then there is Whitewater. Bartley doesn’t mention Vincent Foster, and it is a telling ommission, because it was the recurring theme of the opinion page in the 90s, one that endeared it to the orthodox among the believers, but which lost it the middle ground (let’s call them the rational readers). Bartley’s speech would have been a good occasion to admit that yes, it was all tilting at windmills; and yes, had he jettisoned the Foster obsession early on he would have had more influence to bear on issues that matter more.

But he is absolutely right about one thing. Things today are better than they were 30 years ago. And you don’t have to be an optimist to see that. But I also believe that many of the problems in 1972 were self-inflicted (let’s say 3 out of 4: stagflation, Watergate and Vietnam, but not communism, which with hindsight was a paper tiger anyway). Today’s terrorism is not a self-inflicted problem. But pollution risks becoming one in the coming decades. And unless the journal changes its tune on this issue, it will make sure it does. When it comes to the environment, there is no reason to believe optimism pays.

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I was in New York all last week, which both explains the relative scarcity of posts recently, and the vehemently pro-unfettered-movement-of-goods-and-labor stance of the next few posts.

It is time to stand up and be counted in favor of Turkey’s accession to the EU.

French ex-President Valery Giscard d’Estaing said 10 days ago that Turkey should never be a part of the EU, for two main reasons: Not enough of it is in Europe; and it does not have a Christian heritage.

What French ex-Presidents say is not usually important, for good reasons. But VGE is in charge of writing a presumptive EU Constitution, and it seems he is so intent on granting EU citizens rights via cultural and religious prerogatives that he is in danger of ensconcing the European identity in an ethnocentric, exclusive definition designed to outwit the aspirations of the Turks. To this end, he had an audience with the Pope recently, in which the pontiff and VGE no doubt patted each other on the back.

Nevermind what I think of people who should have retired from public office long ago but instead are still meddling in the affairs of a world they will not have to live in; in their rush to disbar Turkey, both the pope and VGE have forgotten their history. Turkey does have a Christian heritage, one that spans from Roman times until the fall of Constantinople in 1453. That’s a millenium’s worth of old-school Christianity, which is more than anyone should be forced to bear. But perhaps the pope maintains that it was the wrong kind of Christianity.

If VGE gets his way, the EU will define itself according to criteria which countries cannot choose themselves. Countries cannot choose a heritage. Countries cannot choose a physical location. They cannot choose a religion. But they can choose freedom of religion. They can choose freedom of speech, free elections and a market economy. These are the ideals that should define Europe—these are our successes over the past 50 years. VGE’s vision is exclusionary; a throwback, however feebly, to the old nationalist myths that sustained the fascist regimes of Europe’s past. And Le Pen approves.

Putting it more starkly: Saying that Muslim countries cannot be good European citizens is saying, not too subtly, that Muslims cannot be good European citizens. In fact, Muslims can be model European citizens.

Just last week, Turkey went out of its way to show us this. It peacfully transferred power to a democratically elected Muslim government that will continue to pursue EU membership by aligning its laws to that of the EU. The death penalty is already out. The press is newly free. Cyprus is about to be resolved (!). And now VGE wants to take away the carrot.

D’Estaing’s preference for an exclusionary stance rather than an inclusionary one is telling. It is the stance of a Europe in decline, either too smug in its arrogance or else taking a defensive posture in a world in which it feels besieged. I don’t know which it is, nor do I care, but it is an attitude I wish Europe would snap out of. The willingness of Turkey to join the EU is a massive compliment. By rejecting Turkey, Europe would be behaving as a snobbish high school clique rejecting the uncool newcomer.

But I’m afraid that Fortress Europe is an idea whose heyday is just around the corner, and as usual, a Frenchman has best verbalized the rationale for this particular odiousness.

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I’ve just come back from a hectic week in New York so it is time to catch up.

First off: That protest march in Italy. What a bunch of idiots. Avanti Saddam! But I’ve got to give it to him, he’s managed to do what no government in Europe has ever managed to do: turn fervent lefties into pro-nuclear weapons marchers. Manuel was there:

All in all, the Social Forum gave anyone with a grievance an excuse to take a roadtrip. Angry at the Italian state for supporting Fiat’s closing of the Termini Imerese plant? Come on down! Pissed at Berlusconi for supporting the war in Iraq? Come on down! Support the PLO? Come on down! Like to smoke hash in public? You must come down to Florence and march!

It was great! 500,000 people engaged in collective whining.

Matthew wants to know why I hadn’t blogged the US election results. I did in fact make a mental blog this evening, as I was wandering through a downtown Stockholm bookstore with more quality English language books than your average New York Barnes & Noble (a whole wall with black-spined Penguin Classics, for example). But then I decided it wasn’t interesting enough to post. Imagine if I blogged everything that came to mind. No, don’t. But now Matthew’s asked for it.

I was thinking once again of the quality of life in Stockholm, of how stupendously high it is, and how it has been achieved through economic policies that are very different from the US model, which undeniably also generates a high standard of living (but only a stellar quality of life if you happen to live in NYC). And it got me thinking in ways which I know Charles Kenny will approve of.

Perhaps government policy on the economy and a whole range of social issues does not figure at all in the ultimate success or failure of a society to maximize utility. And so elections would be mostly irrelevant (including US ones). What then does matter?

I decided that levels of corruption are the main deteminant of social and economic development. Corrupt societies are never wealthy. And, tellingly, there are no politicians campaigning for more graft. Also, there are no politicians campaigning against property rights (anymore). But since politicians can still practice graft or theft, perhaps voters should value integrity above all else and ignore opinions completely (This last sentence was for John/Eurof).

The upshot of all this: In two years, vote McCain for president and put in office a man of character who works tirelessly to reduce the opportunities for corruption in American society, first and foremost with his campaign finance reform bill.

This blog was paid for by Citizens for Matthew Rose.

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The Belgian ambassador to Israel gave an interview to an Arab-Israeli newspaper, and it has been garnering some attention these past few days.

Supporters of the Palestinian cause have been lauding the reported comments, while the Israeli government has fiercely criticized them. But according to extremely well placed sources familiar with the situation, both sides are evaluating a bastardized rendition of what was actually said. I think I know someone who needs a personal digital voice recorder for Christmas. And who needs to stop assuming journalists are not scum. Of course they are scum, unless proven otherwise.

First point: If an ambassador were to say that Sharon’s Infrastructure Minister Effi Eitam is a fascist, such a statement would indeed constitute an interference in the internal affairs of Israel. In any case, I’m not sure that such a statement would be true, strictly speaking: Eitam is certainly a bigot and a racist in favor of transferring the Palestinians out of the West Bank. Simply put, he propounds ethnic cleansing as collective punishment. Fascism, on the other hand, was primarily a socio-economic organizing principle advocating the subordination of the individual to a totalitarian state. It is true that typically, fascist dictatorships pursued a policy of belligerent nationalism and racism, but these are not usually considered the defining attributes of the movement.

Nevertheless, the term ‘fascist’ remains as an insult among the left-leaning. Fair enough.

What was actually said to the reporter regarding Eitam, on background, was that if a politician in Europe were to promote a policy of “transferring” ethnic groups, he would undoubtedly be labeled a fascist. Le Pen in his early days would rant about sending back the immigrants where they came from. And he was labeled a fascist for it. (Of late, Europe’s xenophobic parties have had a hard time deciding whether to be first and foremost anti-Semitic or anti-Muslim. It’s a problem you only get if you hate too much: The enemies of your enemies are still your enemies.)

But it’s time to put on our parsing hats. The reported comment explicitly states Eitam is a fascist. The actual comment implied many in Europe label him a fascist. And this happens to be true, regardless of whether the label is accurate. The difference is there, and it is a diplomat’s job to utter the kind of comment that was actually uttered, not the kind that was reported.

Second point: When asked about the recent comment by the British Ambassador to an Israeli General that the West Bank is the “largest detention camp in the world,” the Belgian Ambassador said that on his own recent travels in the West Bank he had seen little or no traffic between Palestinian towns, and that the people there were in a “state of collective depression.” A reporter might infer from this that the two ambassadors are essentially in agreement. But a reporter may not, as a result of such an inference, freely interchange quote attributions between the two individuals. Like I said, journalists are scum.

There is a larger point to make, however. Nuance is the first casualty of any propaganda war. All shades of gray are reclassified as either black or white. Another case in point:

When I was in Israel this summer, a Belgian court was deciding whether or not it had jurisdiction in a suit brought against Israeli PM Sharon by a Belgian-Lebanese group for his role in the Sabra and Shatila camp massacre in 1982. A few years earlier Belgium had passed a law which allowed citizens to indict sitting heads of state for gross human rights violations. All the world’s heads of state, that is, except the Belgian Prime Minister and the Belgian King, because they enjoy immunity from Belgian laws. Which made this law extremely stupid, not to mention a tad hypocritical. But that’s not the point of this paragraph. The point of this paragraph (and I will get to it, I assure you) is that this whole episode was completely misconstrued by both sides, and consequently simultaneously applauded or denounced for the same, wrong, reason. The suit was brought by a citizen, not the government, and thus it did not reflect government policy. But this did not stop the Arab press from lauding Belgium’s brave stand against Israel, and Israel’s press from lamenting another European government’s lurch towards anti-semitism.

As we crossed into Egypt, for example, all the border guards, upon noticing our passports, went out of their way to welcome us especially and let us know that they liked us. Refusing to take credit for something the Belgian government did not do proved quite futile. In Israel, I took great pains to explain the nuances of of the Belgian mess to Israeli friends, but as far as your average mainstream press article or op-ed piece was concerned, it was a clear-cut case of an anti-Israeli policy.

An then, the Belgian court decided it did not have jurisdiction. The Lebanese decided Belgium had caved in to Israeli pressure, and Israel decided Belgium had caved in to Israeli pressure, when all along it was a Belgian court that had caved in to common sense and decided to interpret a stupid law extremely narrowly in order to save Belgium further embarrassment.

But it’s still kind of sad that the only time we Belgians force people to sit up and take notice of our opinions is when they are fabricated by somebody else.

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