Author: Dan Kennedy

State Sen. Marian Walsh, D-Boston, has posted an op-ed piece to Media Nation on the financial-disclosure bill that would require religious organizations to adhere to the same reporting requirements as secular nonprofit groups. Walsh writes:

Applying neutral laws to charities does not violate the separation of religion and the state. The goal of this bill is to bring all charities into compliance with a neutral charitable law. This reporting requirement will remove an inequity in charitable law that allows religious organizations to keep their donors and the public in the dark about their finances. This bill does not expand the powers of the attorney general. He or she may already obtain this information with a court order. The attorney general cannot currently run any religion and will not be able to run a religion when this bill becomes law.

Public disclosure of finances is not a punishment. Public disclosure protects the taxpayers, who subsidize all charities with tax breaks; the donors, whose money finances the charity; and the charity itself, whose operation provides a greater good to society. All other charities, large and small, currently provide basic financial information and all religious charities should as well.

Walsh also argues that the cost of compliance should not be particularly onerous.

One of my favorite Bostonians, civil-liberties lawyer Harvey Silverglate, finds himself — that is, has injected himself — into the midst of a controvery over genocide, history and public education.

Silverglate has filed suit in U.S. District Court over a state law that uses the word “genocide” to describe the deaths of an estimated one million Armenians at the hands of the Ottoman Empire during World War I. Kara Scannel of the Wall Street Journal reported on the suit in this Oct. 27 article. Shelley Murphy followed up the next day in the Boston Globe.

Today, Silverglate and a fellow lawyer, Norman Zalkind, have an op-ed piece in the Globe explaining their actions. They write:

The legislative seed curtailing debate on this historical question was planted more than six years ago. In March 1999, the Massachusetts Legislature enacted a statute that required the construction of a curricular materials guide “on genocide and human rights issues” for use in public schools. The guide itself states that it should provide ”differing points of view on controversial issues.” However, when it came time to implement the law, the Department of Education, after initially including materials on both sides of the “Armenian Genocide” controversy, eliminated all materials arguing against the genocide classification.

This censorship of previously included materials occurred after the department was lobbied by a state senator and others who claimed that any thesis calling the label genocide into question was “racist” or ”hate speech.” Commissioner David Driscoll and Board of Education Chairman James E. Peyser consequently wrote on Aug. 31, 1999, that “the legislative intent of the statute was to address the Armenian genocide and not to debate whether or not this occurred.” Driscoll and Peyser thus made an inherently political decision that reversed the educational judgment of those who thought both sides worthy of being aired. Any time political interference results in censorship of educationally suitable materials, our students lose.

Although I’ve worked with Silverglate as both an editor and an occasional collaborator, he and I haven’t talked about this. And Harvey certainly knows that I wouldn’t hesitate to disagree with him. Though I would never doubt his motives, it doesn’t necessarily follow that I would therefore agree with his conclusions.

In this case, I’m not sure what to think. To my mind, the question comes down to whether there really is a legitimate historical debate over what happened to the Armenians of the Ottoman Empire, a terrible crime that is routinely described as “genocide.” (For what it’s worth, the Encyclopedia Britannica — to which I can’t link because I access it via a closed database — does indeed use the “G”-word.)

If Massachusetts school officials are excluding a legitimate historical point of view in order to appease the state’s Armenian-American community, then Harvey’s got a strong case to make. If, however, denying that what happened to the Armenians was genocide is akin to denying what took place during the Holocaust, then there’s nothing good to say about teaching “the other side.” That would make as much sense as making sure that the Holocaust-education program Facing History and Ourselves included David Irving‘s Holocaust-denial books in its curriculum for the sake of “balance.”

I’m uncomfortable with Silverglate and Zalkind’s reliance on the legal definition of “genocide” in discussing this issue. They write in today’s Globe:

Though historians have documented death and deportation of large numbers of Armenians (as well as the deaths of many Turks), they disagree over whether what happened constitutes “genocide,” a term defined by international law as the deliberate and systematic destruction of a racial, political, or cultural group.

It strikes me that the definition of “genocide” that I found in the American Heritage Dictionary (“The systematic and planned extermination of an entire national, racial, political, or ethnic group”), which is similar to the legal definition but grounded in life rather than law, is more than sufficient. What happened during World War I was either genocide or it wasn’t, and it shouldn’t matter what international law has to say about the matter.

Silverglate and Zalkind’s next sentence goes to the heart of the matter:

While many historians argue that it was the intent of the Turks to exterminate the Armenians as a people, others counter that such intent has not been firmly established and that the events more closely resemble a civil war than a genocidal campaign.

The question, then, is whether the historians on the it-wasn’t-genocide wing of the dispute are conscientious scholars or a bunch of David Irvings.

For what it’s worth, this Wikipedia article seems balanced, even if it’s accompanied by a warning that says, “The neutrality of this article is disputed.” Here’s the lead:

The Armenian Genocide (also known as the Armenian Holocaust or the Armenian Massacre) is a term which refers to the forced mass evacuation and related deaths of hundreds of thousands or over a million Armenians, during the government of Young Turks from 1915 to 1917 in the Ottoman Empire. Several facts in connection with the genocide are a matter of ongoing dispute between parts of the international community and Turkey. Although it is generally agreed that events said to comprise the Armenian Genocide did occur, the Turkish government rejects that it was genocide, on the alleged basis that the deaths among the Armenians, were not a result of a state-sponsored plan of mass extermination, but from the result of inter-ethnic strife, disease and famine during the turmoil of World War I.

Despite this thesis, most Armenian, Western, and an increasing number of Turkish scholars believe that the massacres were a case of what is termed genocide. For example, most Western sources point to the sheer scale of the death toll. The event is also said to be the second-most studied case of genocide, and often draws comparison with the Holocaust.

Toward the end of the Wikipedia article is this intriguing section:

There is a general agreement among Western historians that the Armenian Genocide did happen. The International Association of Genocide Scholars (the major body of scholars who study genocide in North America and Europe), for instance, formally recognize the event and consider it to be undeniable. On the other hand, the academic recognition has not always been followed by government and media recognition. Many governments, including the United States, United Kingdom and, ironically, Israel do not officially use the word genocide to describe these events, due in part to their strong commercial and political ties to Turkey, though some government officials have used the term personally.

Based on this rather cursory evidence, it seems to me that if refusing to refer to what happened to the Armenians as “genocide” isn’t quite on a par with Holocaust-denial, then it nevertheless may be heading in that direction. Harvey is right in thinking of this as a free-speech issue, but it’s not solely a free-speech issue. It’s also an educational issue. For instance, scientifically literate educators refuse to teach intelligent design not because they oppose free speech, but because there’s no scientific basis for it.

Along the same lines, refusing to teach Massachusetts schoolchildren that what happened in the Ottoman Empire wasn’t genocide may be less a matter of censorship than it is of not teaching bad history.

As I suggested at the top, I’m open on this subject. I really don’t know enough about the Armenian catastrophe to be passing judgment on this. But if this was a genocide — and the weight of history strongly suggests that it was — then denying it has no place in the classroom.

Boston Globe columnist Eileen McNamara today charges that political insiderism is responsible for the delay of a bill that would require churches, synagogues and mosques to do the same kind of public financial reporting as non-religious, nonprofit organizations. McNamara writes:

Churches became exempt only in 1954 from the reporting requirements that govern tax-exempt, charitable organizations in the state. The sex abuse scandal illuminated the folly of such secrecy. Critics are being disingenuous when they argue that disclosure would be an infringement on religious freedom. This is not about theology; it is about money.

This follows on the heels of a Globe story by Frank Phillips last week reporting that Protestant groups had succeeded in postponing action on the bill, drafted in order to force more accountability on the part of the Catholic Church.

So is McNamara right? I don’t know. Her argument makes sense. But here’s another perspective: A friend who is an Episcopal priest told me last week that the bill, if it passes, will cost her small, struggling North Shore church $5,000 a year in paperwork and accounting expenses — possibly forcing it to close.

Moreover, she said, the bill wouldn’t even accomplish the goal of requiring the Boston Archdiocese — the real target in all of this — to disclose the finances of each individual Catholic church. The archdiocese simply doesn’t budget that way, keeping everything in a central account. Legislators would like to know more because of the church closings, some of which appear to have been motivated by internal church politics and/or land-value considerations.

Opponents of the bill argue that it would violate the constitutional separation of church and state. I could argue just as logically that exempting churches from the same reporting requirements with which other non-profits must comply amounts to unconstitutional state sponsorship of religion.

Nevertheless, the possibility that a bill aimed at the Catholic Church would almost certainly miss its target and instead harm innocent bystanders suggests that we need to know more about it before the state Legislature votes.

As McNamara notes, this bill has been floating around for quite a while. It’s time for the Globe to stop covering this solely as a Beacon Hill story, and instead to explore what it would mean for churches, synagogues, mosques and other religious organizations.

Bob Woodward has had his trip to the woodshed. Washington Post ombudsman Deborah Howell got it exactly right when she wrote, “He has to operate under the rules that govern the rest of the staff — even if he’s rich and famous.”

Now, enough.

There’s been a lot of talk the past few days about unfair it was that Woodward would almost certainly escape from this mess of his own making, while former New York Times reporter Judith Miller‘s career is in serious doubt. Boston Globe columnist Joan Vennochi took this on in the Sunday paper.

Here’s the difference. Yes, both Woodward and Miller covered up for administration officials in the Valerie Plame matter because they had promised them anonymity in the course of interviewing them. (When did that become controversial among journalists?) But Woodward is an extraordinary reporter whose interviews around that time did much to advance our understanding of the war in Iraq.

Unlike Woodward’s earlier, pro-White House “Bush at War,” the book that emerged from those interviews, “Plan of Attack,” was full of vital stuff, such as then-CIA director George Tenet’s mind-bending “It’s a slam dunk!” quote and Colin Powell’s heartfelt-if-too-late misgivings about what he had helped enable. If you think “Plan of Attack” was invaluable, then perhaps you should think twice about whether to denounce Woodward’s methods. No, Woodward is not a fearless outsider, like Seymour Hersh. He’s an insider who trades on his connections. But his work still matters.

Miller, on the other hand, got caught up in all this immediately after becoming radioactive for her faulty reporting on Iraq’s alleged weapons of mass destruction and ties to Al Qaeda. That’s why there’s so much anger being directed her way; the fact that she spent 85 days in jail in order to protect Lewis “Scooter” Libby has very little to do with that.

There is residual good will toward Woodward, and there should be. There was residual bad will toward Miller, and there should have been. That’s not to condone Woodward’s behavior in keeping crucial information from his editor and in disingenuously attacking special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald’s investigation on television. But these are two different journalists, and they deserve to be treated differently.

The New York Times and WashingtonPost.com weigh in on the phosphorus story today. The Times article, by Scott Shane, is so oriented toward dismissing it that it’s hard to know what to think. It’s not that Shane is necessarily wrong; it’s that he lacks evidence. The Post’s contribution comes, once again, in William Arkin’s national-security blog.

Shane gets off to a bad start by stating the Italian documentary that unleashed this story “incorrectly” referred to white phosphorus as a chemical weapon. Farther down in the piece, Shane circles around the issue, in effect conceding that the documentary was incorrect only in referring to the substance as an “illegal” chemical weapon. Legal or not, phosphorus is a chemical, and it is used as a weapon. Can we agree on that?

Shane also writes, “The half-hour film was riddled with errors and exaggerations, according to United States officials and independent military experts.” And there is this from Shane’s story:

“It’s discredited the American military without any basis in fact,” said John E. Pike, an expert on weapons who runs GlobalSecurity.org, an independent clearinghouse for military information. He said the “stupidity and incompetence” of official comments had fueled suspicions of a cover-up.

“The story most people around the world have is that the Americans are up to their old tricks — committing atrocities and lying about it,” Mr. Pike said. “And that’s completely incorrect.”

Now, this may all be true. Pike is a respected military analyst. The problem is that Shane presents no real evidence to disprove the claim that civilians were injured and killed by white phosphorus in the battle for Fallujah last year. The Pentagon has already had to backtrack and admit that phosphorus was used to kill insurgents. Is it really such a stretch to think that civilians were caught in the crossfire?

Arkin’s blog entry is considerably more enlightening than Shane’s article. His target is Lt. Gen. Walter E. “Buck” Buchanan III, who, in Arkin’s view, told the Associated Press “three brainless things” in an interview. Here’s what Arkin says about Buchanan’s remarks concerning the phosphorus reports:

“It is purely used as a marking round, not as a weapon. It marks the target so it becomes very clear,” Lt. Gen. Buchanan told the AP. Sir. In all due respect, have you not been reading the newspapers? The Pentagon and State Department have both acknowledged at this point that the Army used white phosphorous as an anti-personnel weapon during the battle of Fallujah in November 2004.

Was white phosphorus used as an incendiary specifically against civilians? I guess that’s still the $64,000 question. But to utter the boilerplate crap that it is only used as [sic] to create smoke or to mark targets is ignorant and insensitive.

What’s still lacking is any commitment on the part of the American media to investigate whether U.S. forces used chemical weapons (sorry, Mr. Shane) against a Fallujah population that included civilians. The whole world is watching. Just today, South Africa’s Globe & Mail has a story headlined “US used chemical weapons, then lied.” That’s just one example out of many.

Do Bill Keller and Len Downie want to wake up tomorrow only to find that the BBC, Robert Fisk or Al-Jazeera has rooted out the truth about what happened in Fallujah?

Also, Danny Schechter has some phosphorus links today.

I remain determinedly neutral about the Boston Globe’s daily Sidekick tab. All I ask is that it not demonstrably suck resources away from the paper’s news-gathering operations.

With that bit of throat-clearing, let’s take a look at today’s paper. There are a grand total of four ads in the 16-page Sidekick section, and that’s actually a lot worse than it sounds: it turns out that every one of them is a house ad, flogging a Globe-produced sports DVD (a full-page, back-cover ad at that), a book by photographer Bill Brett available from the Globe’s online store, a Globe-sponsored “Family Classics” book club and an upcoming event for the Globe Santa charity.

Meanwhile, on Page B5, in the City & Region section, is a full-page ad touting — yes — Sidekick. “Have some fun with your news,” you are urged. I’m not sure what the purpose of this ad is since, if you bought today’s Globe, you already have Sidekick.

Now, I doubt that Sidekick is costing the Globe all that much. If you got rid of it tomorrow, you’d have to expand the paper a bit to reintegrate the funnies and the TV listings, which wouldn’t be free. But surely the separate production run for Sidekick must cost something — the annual salary of a metro reporter and a copy editor, perhaps?

A project like Sidekick is worthless unless it makes money to support the Globe’s journalism. Ergo, Sidekick is worthless.

Another day of virtual silence from the American mainstream media on the use of white phosphorus by U.S. forces in the battle for Fallujah last year.

If you’re just tuning in, the Pentagon admitted to the BBC earlier this week that it had indeed used the flesh-melting substance, but denied having targeted civilians. The problem is that Fallujah was teeming with civilians, and an Italian television documentary recently reported that many of them were among the victims.

This morning’s Google News search reveals that the foreign press, especially in the U.K., continues to follow the story closely. Alternative news sources are as well.

Among the mainstream media, though, the two most interesting things I found were an editorial in the Brattleboro (Vt.) Reformer (“In a guerrilla war … firing a munition like WP [white phosphorus] into a city full of civilians is irresponsible”) and a column by Palm Beach Post ombudsman C.N. Hanif responding to a reader complaint on that paper’s silence.

Hanif quotes Post managing editor Bill Rose, who says his paper does not subscribe to Reuters, the only widely available wire service that carried the story.

A spammer has managed to get past Blogger’s word-verification feature. Click here and you’ll see what I mean. Coincidentally, Blogger recently introduced comment moderation. For now, I’m simply going to wait and see whether this gets out of hand. But moderation is definitely a possibility. It’s too bad.

Whole Foods: Nicer to lobsters than to its employees.

The Christian Science Monitor yesterday published a characteristically clear and concise analysis of reports — confirmed by the Pentagon — that U.S. forces used white phosphorus as a weapon in its battle against insurgents in Fallujah. The issue, of course, is whether the skin-burning substance inadvertently harmed the civilian population as well.

The Monitor’s Mark Sappenfield writes:

[T]he claims made by an Italian television station — that women and children were found with melted skin despite the fact that their clothes were unharmed — are consistent with the action of white phosphorous, scientists say.

In an offensive that involved targeting insurgents who were hidden in a city of 500,000 inhabitants, the allegations — if true — do not prove or disprove military malfeasance.

But they do raise the issue of the military’s judgment. Because fires can burn out of control during a battle, the Convention on Conventional Weapons in 1980 banned the use of incendiary devices, like white phosphorous, in heavily populated areas. America, however, did not sign the agreement.

Is this not a story? Incredibly, if you search Google News this morning for “phosphorus Iraq,” you will get a long list of stories — and nearly every one of them is from the foreign press.

Will the New York Times and/or the Washington Post come through in their Sunday editions? Stay tuned.