BBC Apostrophe 'A Cheap Cop-Out'

Hear ye, hear ye: Unto us a young hippo is born!

Verily, a Happy Little Hippo. Which goes some way towards explaining why we have not been posting, and also why this is going to be a short post.

The emergence of a next generation always tends to put all experiences into perspective. Also, in very real terms, we realize that this mudflat is doomed; thus, we are biased as to posting comments on the world in general and the world of security policy specifically that might be read, if not by anyone now, then possibly 25 years hence by a bright young lady in the throes of a struggle with her parents, in a world much worse than the present one.

Having framed the matter in terms of generations and eons to come, it seems frivolous now to comment on punctuation. Nevertheless, on this Friday night of our Lord 2010, I would like to say why I am bothered by quotation marks in headlines, especially RSS feeds. First, some examples, all culled from the BBC:

• Germany in 'record' 2.2% growth
• Plea for 'blood diamonds' return
• Israeli 'agent' freed in Germany
• Meteors set for 'good show'
• Iraq 'not ready' for US pull-out
• Iran stoning woman 'confesses'
• Afghan army offensive 'ambushed'
• Fox outlines 'leaner' MoD plan

Writing headlines is a difficult and delicate matter, subject to the dictate of pithiness - accuracy and brevity. Not everybody can do it. Nevertheless, we would like to think that the legions of highly trained hacks at the Beeb would be the masters of this art. Not so.

There are basically three reasons for placing apostrophes in a news headline. The first is when the headline consists of a direct, highly relevant quote by somebody cited in the article (Defense Minister: Trident 'Not Needed'). The second is when the information cited in the headline is attributed to a source considered unreliable, and the authors wish to distance themselves from the claims stated therein (Iraq Had 'Flying Saucers', Said Curveball). The third is when the author chooses to highlight a specific phrase used by somebody in the article because the wording, rather than the substance, of the citation is highly unusual (British Economy 'Fucked', Says UK Treasury). Let us consider the examples cited above - all picked at random on a slow Friday news night in the midst of a summer slump on 13 August 2010. They account for eight out of 27 headlines tonight, just under 30% of the top RSS feeds on the BBC website.

The first, Germany in 'record' 2.2% growth, refers to the latest GDP figures in the German economy, based on official figures. Why the quotation marks? When we look at the article in question, we see that the stats are attributed "to the national statistics office, Destatis". Destatis is the Deutsches Statistisches Bundesamt, or the German Federal Office of Statistics, so the source is prima facie a credible authority. Is the author questioning the legitimacy of the source? If so, we are not told so, or why.

The second headline is Plea for 'blood diamonds' return. One might think that the author disagrees with the term "blood diamond" or wishes to make clear that this is a non-scientific term. Such a view would seem to be supported by the fact that the phrase is once again placed in quotation marks in the article itself:

The war crimes trial of Liberian ex-President Charles Taylor has heard claims he gave [supermodel Naomi Campbell] "blood diamonds" thought to originate in Sierra Leone.

But why use the quotation marks in the headline? The term itself has entered common parlance, and if anywhere, a condensed headline would be the appropriate place to use it without punctuation, while the body of the text could make clear that questions remain over the assertion that the diamonds were given to Campbell. The term blood diamonds per se is uncontested. Further complicating matters, the headline should have a possessive plural apostrophe (diamonds' return). Did a junior copy editor make a mistake here?

Headline number three is a simple cop-out: Israeli 'agent' freed in Germany. The BBC has so far not made up its mind, and failed to research, whether the person in question is an agent or not. Some say yes, others say no: how would the Beeb know? This would be fair enough if the story were breaking news and all other news outlets apart from the one that published the scoop were following up on the first report. But the Dubai assassination story has been public knowledge since January of this year. Should the BBC not at this point have determined whether or not there is any substance to the "agent" angle of this story? Also, if we are giving Israel the benefit of the doubt in this report, why not say 'Israeli agent' rather than Israeli 'agent'? It's a small, but essential difference.

The next headline is simply a lame attempt at humour, with "good show" being a direct quote attributed to the BAA...

John Mason from the British Astronomical Association (BAA) told BBC News: "Weather-permitting, we should be in for a very good show across the UK.

... as well as a common phrase suggesting gentlemen at the races at Ascot or at a pugilistic competition under the Marquess of Queensberry's rules. "Good show, old boy," indeed, but the implied bathos does not do the story, or the BBC, justice; that is, unless Pimm's and strawberries with cream be served during observation of the Perseid shower.

Iraq 'not ready' for US pull-out is a difficult one. On the one hand, this story is based on a specific accusation of coitus interruptus made by an Iraqi general, as the full headline (Iraqi general says planned US troop pull-out 'too soon') on the BBC website makes clear. However, the story again fails to take a stance on what is actually happening in Iraq. All three subheaders in the story also have quotation marks, seemingly absolving the unnamed reporter of the responsibility to establish the truth for the benefit of his/her readers:
Security 'void'
(according to Iraqi top army officer Lt Gen Babaker Zebari)

'Significant improvements'
(according to US Gen Ray Odierno)

'Wrong signals'
(according to Faleh Abdul-Jabbar, the director of the Baghdad-based Iraq Institute for Strategic Studies).

Who is right? Well, the BBC won't tell you.

Even more ridiculous, misleading, and uninformative is the headline Iran stoning woman 'confesses'. Here, the quotation marks serve as a "wink, wink" to the reader, so that the BBC journalist can infer, without saying it in so many words, that the confession was obtained under duress. But apparently it is too much to ask for the journalist to stake out a position on whether or not the confession - sorry, 'confession' - was legitimate. Most laughable is this section:

The woman, whose face was pixelated, admitted her part in the 2005 killing, despite Ms Ashtiani having earlier told Western media that she had been acquitted of the charge.

The accompanying footage shows a pixelated person (woman?) wearing a chador, speaking in Azeri, dubbed into Persian, allegedly confessing complicity in her husband's killing. Also, the accused (who may or may not be the person in the video) has since reportedly denied any part in the murder; she now accuses her lawyer, who has fled to Norway, of releasing the video against her wishes; she now may be hanged, according to the report, which further calls into question the already outrageously stupid epithet Iran stoning woman. Thus, considering all the uncertainties involved here, a slightly less misleading headline might be 'Iranian' 'woman' 'retracts' 'confession'.

Did I say this was going to be a short post? Let's leave the other headlines for now and conclude that the quotation mark is grotesquely misused by the BBC and other news outlets (yes, I'm looking at you, Guardian: Gulf oil spill 'may be over' and Telegraph 'Dead girl' [i.e., not-dead girl] sparks panic after photographed lying down). First of all, journalists: Do your job and research what happened. Then tell us what really transpired, not what somebody may have said or thought they had seen. Is that too much to ask? Thanks.

UPDATE: While I was writing this, the BBC outdid itself with this cretinous headline: Obama backs 'Ground Zero mosque'. Referring to Obama's backing for religious freedom, in the case of the not-exactly-mosque, to be built on the hallowed ground of the former Burlington Coat Factory. Thanks for pointing that out, Beeb!

Money Talks: The Riyal Truth

Ingenious Iranian opposition members are apparently using paper money to disseminate anti-regime propaganda and challenge the authority of the state on its very own symbol of power, the national currency. According to the Iranian exile website Payvand.com, run from Mountain View in California, opposition activists

"have taken their expressions to another high circulation mass-medium, banknotes. The Central Bank of Iran has tried to take these banknotes out of circulation, but there are just too many of them, and gave up. For the activists’ people it’s a way of saying “We are here, and the green movement is going on”.

In times like these, the "green movement" idea of letting the money do the talking might be worth a try in other countries too. Certainly, this type of free speech is a most felicitous marriage of form and substance - the medium is the message.

Assuming that these sample images are genuine and represent a sense of what a significant part of the Iranian public think, it is particularly interesting to see that the regime is being challenged on the basis of its deals with other countries. Khamenei is accused of being a "servant of Putin" and the government is charged with having passed on the nation's oil revenues to Chavez. The government's relations with China (from where it imports garbage) and India (to where it exports gas) are also slammed.


But the slogans also hit pretty close to home on domestic policy issues. Particularly irksome must be this quote from Ali Shariati, the chief ideologue of the 1979 revolution (all quotes based on the info provided by Payvand.com - I don't claim to know any Farsi):

"Don’t believe what a government says if that government is the only entity that has the right of expression."

Ouch... it's got to hurt for any corrupt, violent, fundamentalist regime that draws its legitimacy from a revolutionary heritage when it is reminded by its own population of its long-lost ideals from 30 years ago. Meanwhile, in my own neighborhood, I will be looking out for Swiss franc banknotes with hand-scribbled demands for nationalization of UBS and Credit Suisse, and calling for the head of Marcel Ospel.

In other news from the Siamese twins of crime and politics (conjoined at the head), The Observer reports that over US$350 billion of drug money were injected into legal circulation (read: laundered) at the height of the financial crisis last year when no other liquid assets were available, keeping several unnamed banks afloat; and last night, somebody wiped that smirk off Silvio Berlusconi's face - throwing shoes is so 2008:


Not that I endorse that kind of behavior. Pronta guarigione, Silvio!

Mine/Thine

What can I say... this kind of thing wouldn't fly back in the old country... but I am currently in Switzerland, where people still juxtapose words like "Lebensraum" and "Heimat" quite innocuously - in the Migros supermarket.

Back in Germany, the store would be considered to have gotten off lightly if it was only subjected to a boycott and occasional firebombing. I guess I'm not in Kansas anymore. Incidentally, these plastic bars are known in German variously as

• Transportbandwarentrennleiste
• Kundenseperator
• Warenabtrennhölzchen (according to Max Goldt)
• NäKuBi (short for "nächster Kunde, bitte" - "next customer please")
• Miendientje ("mine-thine-let", in East Frisia)

Aoristed Development

Wait... huh?

France has arrested a researcher at the European Organization for Nuclear Research (Cern) for suspected links with al-Qaeda, officials have said.

"He was not a Cern employee and performed his research under a contract with an outside institute. His work did not bring him into contact with anything that could be used for terrorism".

So: will he, or will he not, have been being bringing about the end of the world as we will have been knowing it? I'm confused. Everything will have been being changed after 9/11! Or does that not apply where aorist is invalid?

What can a terrorist not do?

While doing research on cybersecurity I came across an article in the Guardian that discussed a study revealing how "terrorists could soon use the internet to help set off a devastating nuclear attack". This study, commissioned by the International Commission on Nuclear Non-proliferation and Disarmament (ICNND), basically warned that without greater efforts to secure global information infrastructure, these so-called terrorists could hack into computer systems and create havoc in the form of a mushroom cloud.

That's right, according to this study there is no longer the need to acquire the nuclear materials when you can simply find the right whiz-kid to hack, hack, and hack away.

Interesting - and yet this study does what so many have done before it... it presents yet another potential, catastrophic way that 'terrorists' could circumvent the system and carry out some asymmetric, dramatic, Hollywood-style attack that would significantly disrupt our world as we know it... well, that is until Arnold Schwarzenegger comes in to save the day. Meanwhile, most groups are relying on classic bombing campaigns (IEDs, roadside bombs, suicide bombing, grenades, etc.) and the more recent swarm-based tactics that we've seen in Mumbai and elsewhere. While the Western world continues to develop more fantastical ideas on what these individuals could do, at this point I'm wondering: what can terrorists not do? A quick internet search of "what could terrorists do" rendered all types of fantastic things; for instance, they could, of course, carry out a nuclear attack (this was the most popular), use insects to carry out biological attacks, employ killer robots, launch satellite attacks, poison our food or drinking water, breed new types of pox, and the list goes on.

Not bad.

Another thing that this article, or rather study, manages to do is follow a much deeper tradition of scenario-construction and 'what ifs' in the world of counter-terrorism that will likely never be held accountable. Like the killer robots or insects, the potential that 'terrorists' could hack into government computers and hit the nuke button continue to feed into a threat-spectrum that grows by the day. However, like most scenarios, they never come true. What they manage to do is construct and distort the capabilities of what a non-state actor is able or even willing to do to communicate a political message. I'm not saying that scenario building is necessarily bad or that we should not look at how dual-use technologies can be exploited, but that we should be tempered in our analysis and look deeper into what today's violent non-state actor is doing and how they're leveraging their environment to achieve their objectives.

Sworn Statements on Murky Blackwater Deeds

According to two affidavits deposited in a federal court in Virginia on 3 August, the then-CEO of the mercenary company formerly known as Blackwater and now rebranded as "Xe", Erik Prince, "murdered or had murdered" Blackwater employees who were cooperating with a government inquiry about the company's criminal conduct in Iraq. Both sworn statements, posted as part of an article in The Nation by Jeremy Scahill, were given by former employees of Blackwater named only as "John Doe One" and "John Doe Two" for their own protection. The second affidavit also says that Prince "views himself as a Christian crusader tasked with eliminating Muslims and the Islamic faith from the globe" and intentionally deployed mercenaries to Iraq who "shared his vision of Christian supremacy, knowing and wanting these men to take every available opportunity to murder Iraqis."

Among the other charges cited in the affidavits and in the article by Scahill - who has written a book on Blackwater's activities - are the following:

• Erik Prince smuggled illegal weapons ("sawed off semi-automatic machine guns with silencers") and ammunition ("designed to explode after penetrating within the human body") into Iraq in bags of dog food.
• Blackwater knew some of its staff intentionally used excessive force to injure and murder innocent bystanders, and did nothing about it. Both John Does cite numerous cases where innocent passersby were killed apparently "as a sport or game".
  
• Some of its mercenaries used M249 Squad Automatic Weapon ("SAW") machine guns in violation of State Department rules, which only allowed them to use pistols or M4 automatic carbines.
• Against the advice of other company executives, Prince insisted on deploying to Iraq men who were patently unfit to serve, due to their stated intention to rack up "body counts" of "ragheads", due to alcohol and steroid abuse, or because they ignored safety regulations in operating weapons.
• Prince also ignored the advice of mental health experts who warned him against deploying mercenaries who were psychologically unfit to serve.
• He "knowingly hired two persons who were previously involved in the Kosovo sex trafficking ring to serve at relatively high-levels [sic] within his companies."
• Blackwater ran a "Man Camp" where employees were supplied with prostitutes, including child prostitutes. Prince, the "Christian crusader", also visited the camp.
• Many top Blackwater executives in the company's North Carolina headquarters took part in an "ongoing wife-swapping and sex ring", which caused so much trouble among the top management that a special investigation was undertaken.

Needless to say, Prince is a generous financial backer of fundamentalist Christian groups, having donated millions of dollars to causes such as The Family Research Council, Focus on the Family, the Council for National Policy, and Watergate conspirator Chuck Colson's Prison Fellowship Ministries. Naturally, he is also a large donor to the American Enterprise Institute and the Republican Party. The company's excellent relations to the Bush administration are further illustrated by the fact that the former director of the CIA Counterterrorist Center and the State Department's counterterrorism coordinator, Cofer "Flies on their Eyeballs" Black, has been a vice chairman of Blackwater/Xe since 2005.

The company has won government contracts worth at least hundreds of millions of dollars since 2001.

Arrested for Watching the Watchers

Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? The British police officer used to be regarded worldwide as the epitome of fairness and the protector of the public peace. That was rubbish even back in the old days of course. But, as they say (all together now): EVERYTHING CHANGED AFTER 9/11... Looking at this footage of women being arrested for monitoring the police at Kingsnorth climate camp, I am a lot less enthusiastic at the thought of travelling to the UK next month... welcome to the authoritarians' paradise created by New Labour. The two ladies in question were involved with Fit Watch, the organization that watches the British police's Forward Intelligence Teams (whose job is to harass demonstrators at protests in the UK). More information about the cops in this video and their identities (they are required to provide badge numbers if requested by members of the public) is available at The Guardian and at this Fit Watch blog entry. Oh... need I add that the women were of course cleared of all charges in court, having spent a total of four days in prison without bail or access to their lawyers - just for asking the cops for their badge numbers?