Media Nation

Nearly seven years ago the Atlantic Monthly published a terrifying cover story by the scientist William H. Calvin titled “The Great Climate Flip-Flop.”

Calvin’s thesis, simply put, was that global warming could disrupt the northward flow of the Gulf Stream and thus, paradoxically, kick off a new ice age in Northern Europe — which is, after all, at approximately the same latitude as Labrador.

Now a new scientific study, reported in the journal Nature, finds that it may already be happening, according to this New York Times story.

Here’s an excerpt from the Nature press release:

Failures of the Atlantic Ocean’s circulation system are thought to have been responsible for abrupt and extreme climate changes during the ice age that lasted from 110,000 to 23,000 years ago. More recently, a fictional shutdown of the Gulf Stream inspired the 2004 Hollywood blockbuster The Day after Tomorrow.

The climate shifts depicted in the movie, in which New York is engulfed by an instant ice age, are mere fancy. But scientists are worried about the real changes measured in the North Atlantic. Both salinity and water density, which influence the transport of warm waters, have previously been found to be decreasing.

Global warming is often thought to be a gradual process. But, as Calvin noted in the Atlantic, the effects of it could come in catastrophic waves, as tipping points are reached and then breached. This isn’t alarmism — it’s realism.

There may be more to say in the coming days about the U.S. military’s secret advertorial campaign in Iraq, a story that was broken yesterday by the Los Angeles Times.

For now, though, kudos to NPR’s new Pentagon correspondent, John Hendren, who scored an interview with David Halberstam, the author of a classic history of American involvement in Vietnam, “The Best and the Brightest.”

Halberstam: “The only people they fool are themselves. And then they begin to believe it, and then they begin to believe in the Potemkin village. And so it’s stupid. It doesn’t work, and it’s dangerous in the sense that it corrupts those who are trying to corrupt others.”

You can listen to Hendren’s piece here.

Mickey Kaus has some worthwhile thoughts on what’s wrong with TimesSelect. No, information doesn’t want to be free. But it does want to be available.

The New York Times finally publishes a toughly worded editorial about reports that white phosphorus used by U.S. forces against insurgents in Fallujah last year wound up injuring and killing civilians as well. An excerpt:

Now the use of a ghastly weapon called white phosphorus has raised questions about how careful the military has been in avoiding civilian casualties. It has also further tarnished America’s credibility on international treaties and the rules of warfare.

White phosphorus, which dates to World War II, should have been banned generations ago. Packed into an artillery shell, it explodes over a battlefield in a white glare that can illuminate an enemy’s positions. It also rains balls of flaming chemicals, which cling to anything they touch and burn until their oxygen supply is cut off. They can burn for hours inside a human body.

The United States restricted the use of incendiaries like white phosphorus after Vietnam, and in 1983, an international convention banned its use against civilians. In fact, one of the many crimes ascribed to Saddam Hussein was dropping white phosphorus on Kurdish rebels and civilians in 1991.

Among other things, the editorial is invaluable for its implicit challenge to the news side to start investigating this story.

The Globe reports that Superior Court Judge Ernest Murphy has asked that the financially ailing Herald’s assets be frozen in order to protect the $2.1 million libel judgment he won against the paper earlier this year.

The Herald does not cover the story — at least not in its online edition — and avoids taking any cheap shots against Murphy in this article about the judge’s decision yesterday to boost former UMass president William Bulger’s pension. Interestingly, the story is co-bylined by Dave Wedge, the principal target of Murphy’s libel suit. (The Globe covers the Bulger story here.)

The Herald’s reporting on Murphy was not exactly a model of good journalism. In fact, it was the opposite, pockmarked as it was with inaccuracies and dubiously sourced accusations. But free-press advocates ought to be concerned that a sitting judge can have some influence over the Herald’s future — and possibly its very survival — because of reporting that amounted to criticism of how he performed his public duties. That, more than anything, is what the First Amendment was designed to protect.

Boston Magazine hasn’t updated its “Thank God We’re a Two-Newspaper Town” feature since last July. But Media Nation is here to pick up the slack. From today’s papers:

In one of the harshest punishments it has ever handed down, the state Commission on Judicial Conduct suspended a Plymouth County judge yesterday for a year without pay for sexually harassing two female court workers. The commission also fined him $50,000 and barred him from ever sitting in any court in the county. — Boston Globe

The one-year slap-on-the-wrist suspension that will allow “love judge” Robert F. Murray to return to the bench after sexually harassing female underlings would never pass muster in the private sector, experts say. — Boston Herald

They report, you decide.

The Los Angeles Times today fronts an excellent in-depth story on claims that U.S. forces injured and killed civilians with the flesh-burning substance white phosphorus during its assault on Fallujah last year.

Reporters John Daniszewski and Mark Mazzetti write: “In the 1990s, in fact, the U.S. condemned Iraqi President Saddam Hussein for allegedly using ‘white phosphorus chemical weapons’ against Kurdish rebels and residents of Irbil and Dohuk.” So much for U.S. denials that phosphorus is a chemical weapon.

And there is this:

Abdul Qadir Sadi, an Iraqi from Fallouja in his 30s, said doctors had told him that two of his family members were killed by white phosphorus.

“They had a lot of serious skin burns,” Sadi said. “The doctor at the hospital told us that they must have been hit by these chemicals. They were being treated by the doctor, but after a while, these burned places started to dissolve.”

“We have registered the documents and exhibits of everything that happened,” said Mohammed Tariq, a human rights worker in Fallouja. “We informed the Iraqi Red Crescent, the International Red Cross and [other] international organizations, but our efforts were in vain.”

The L.A. Times dutifully reports Pentagon denials that civilians in Fallujah were targeted. But I can’t imagine that anyone to the right of Ramsey Clark thinks that’s what happened. The issue remains whether U.S. forces attacked insurgents with white phosphorus even though they knew — or should have known — that civilians were in close proximity. Since the Pentagon has already admitted to the former, it’s hardly a great leap of logic to arrive at the latter.

Making up the name of a fake Web site in order to write a cute headline, only to find out later that it’s a real site — it’s a mistake that’s so ’90s. But here we are in 2005, and the New York Times’ “Practical Traveler” column today is accompanied by the headline “Wishyouwerehere.com: Blogs From the Road.”

Yes, as you might have imagined, there is a real Wishyouwerehere.com, a forwarding site that takes you to the online home of a British company called FremantleMedia, “one of the largest international creators and producers of programme brands in the world, with leading prime time drama, serial drama, entertainment and factual entertainment programming in around 43 territories, including the UK, the US, Germany, Australia, France, Italy, Spain, Portugal, Scandinavia, Latin America and Asia.”

According to this “whois” search, the domain name wishyouwerehere.com was registered in London in 1997 by the aforementioned FremantleMedia.

Someone at the Times needs to get a clue.

That’s how fast I’d latch on to Peter Gammons’ idea of trading Matt Clement for Derek Lowe. (Via Nick Cafardo in today’s Boston Globe.) Lowe may be no one’s idea of a role model, but he can pitch under pressure. For that matter, in his last two seasons with the Red Sox he showed that he might not be able to pitch except when there’s pressure — the more, the better.

Meanwhile, Clement, I’m afraid, is going to be Matt Young-ized if he stays here, not just because of his own skittishness but because many Boston fans are spoiled, mean-spirited yahoos. (That is, unless you think the hapless Mark Bellhorn deserved to be hounded out of town.)

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.