Daily Archives: January 8, 2015

Paris: the by-product

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Right on cue: General Michael Hayden, former head of the NSA, commenting on the Paris killings.

MICHAEL HAYDEN: Let me be a little dark here: there really are no solutions, this is a condition. We can manage the condition better, we can make these attacks somewhat less likely or lethal but without changing the character of our society we can’t make them go away all together. Let me add another thought: About 12 months ago I talked about these massive amounts of metadata the NSA held in storage, that metadata doesn’t look all that scary this morning. And I wouldn’t be surprised if the French services pick up cell phones related to the attack and ask the Americans where have you seen these phones active globally.

Canine Wisdom

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I love the New Yorker dog cartoons. (Remember the 1993 one of one mutt explaining to another that “On the Internet, nobody knows you’re a dog”?)

I’ve just come on another classic. Two dogs are walking past a picket fence. One is saying: “It’s always ‘Sit’, ‘Stay’, ‘Heel’ — never ‘Think’, ‘Innovate’, ‘Be Yourself’.”

Which reminds me, perversely, of a New Yorker cat joke. A man, about to go out through his front door, is pointing to a litter-tray and saying to his cat, “Don’t you dare think outside of the box”.

The Paris massacre: journalism is in the front line, but what kind of journalism?

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Interesting comment by Charlie Beckett.

What struck me was how weird it is that these people — and they do deserve the label ‘terrorist’ — have struck against cartoonists. Not drone manufacturers or military bases, diplomats, politicians or financiers, but satirists. It shows what we should have already known. That journalism is part of the ideological war. It is the front-line.

That makes it all the more important that journalists respond thoughtfully and responsibly. I am not going to tell editors what they should publish in relation to this story. But it would be good if their response is in the best tradition of liberal, positive journalism and not just an angry, lashing out that feeds the fear that helps sustain those who perpetrate the violence.

On the other hand, commenting on the firebombing of the Charlie Hebdo offices in 2011, the Time Bureau Chief in Paris at the time wrote this:

It’s obvious free societies cannot simply give in to hysterical demands made by members of any beyond-the-pale group. And it’s just as clear that intimidation and violence must be condemned and combated for whatever reason they’re committed—especially if their goal is to undermine freedoms and liberties of open societies. But it’s just evident members of those same free societies have to exercise a minimum of intelligence, calculation, civility and decency in practicing their rights and liberties—and that isn’t happening when a newspaper decides to mock an entire faith on the logic that it can claim to make a politically noble statement by gratuitously pissing people off.