Month: August 2007

The New York Times takes note of Prime Minister Harper's northern trip last week:

On Aug. 2, a couple of Moscow legislators in a small submersible vessel deposited a Russian flag on the seabed two miles under the polar ice cap — backing up Russia’s claim to close to half the floor of the Arctic Ocean. Canada’s foreign minister, Peter McKay, dismissed the move, sniffing that “this isn’t the 15th century.” But just in case, Canada dispatched no less a personage than Stephen Harper, its prime minister, on a three-day tour of the region and announced plans to build two new military bases to reinforce the country’s territorial claims.

and urges the U.S. to adopt the Law of the Sea:

Under international law, nations have rights to resources that lie up to 200 miles off their shores. The rest is regarded as international waters, subject to negotiation under the Law of the Sea. A nation can claim territory beyond the 200-mile limit, but only if it can prove that the seabed is a physical extension of its continental shelf . . .
The United States does not find itself in a strong position. Misplaced fears among right-wing senators about losing “sovereignty” has kept the Senate from ratifying the Law of the Sea even though the United Nations approved it 25 years ago. This, in turn, means that the United States, with 1,000 miles of coastline in the Arctic, has no seat at the negotiating table.
President Bush and moderate Republicans like Senator Richard Lugar, the ranking Republican on the Foreign Relations Committee, will try to remedy this blunder when Congress reconvenes. This would at least enable Washington to stake its claims to the continental shelf extending northward from Alaska. We may never need a share of that oil, but it seems foolish not to keep it in reserve.

One of the reasons reporters like to be reporters is that they get to do neat things, like ride in the cockpit of a brand new $400-million military super-jet. The Canadian Air Force took possession of its first Boeing C-17 this weekend. It first touched down on Canadian soil in Abbotsford, B.C. on Saturday, where Defence Minister Gordon O'Connor and Chief of Defence Staff Rick Hillier reviewed it and then it flew — with 90,000 pounds of cargo and a few passengers — to its new base at CFB Trenton, Ont.
That's where I caught up with it on Sunday. The Air Force held a party for the new plane to mark its arrival.
Lucky media types got a 45-minute ride in this military marvel and they let us up into the cockpit while we were airborne.
Now this is a plane that can carry a tank and then some so you can imagine the thrust on takeoff from its four giant Pratt and Whitney engines when it takes off, as it did today, with just a handful of reporters in its cargo bay. Wow.
I've put up a handful of photos from today's event and will post a few more tomorrow.

There will now be three by-elections in the province of Quebec on September 17.

The Prime Minister just announced that voters in Roberval-Lac St. Jean will join voters in the ridings of Outremont and Saint-Hyacinthe-Bagot.

Roberval-Lac St. Jean was the riding of former Bloc Quebecois leader Michel Gauthier. Gauthier, after a long career in Ottawa, announced his retirement earlier this year, citing the stress the weekly trips back and forth to his riding. He had recently had some back surgery and found it increasingly difficult.

 

The latest publication from the RAND Corporation looks like an interesting read. It’s called Enlisting Madison Avenue: The Marketing Approach to Earning Popular Support in Theaters of Operation:

Business marketing practices provide a useful framework for improving U.S. military efforts to shape the attitudes and behaviors of local populations in a theater of operations as well as those of a broader, international audience. Enlisting Madison Avenue extracts lessons from these business practices and adapts them to U.S. military efforts, developing a unique approach to shaping that has the potential to improve military-civilian relations, the accuracy of media coverage of operations, communication of U.S. and coalition objectives, and the reputation of U.S. forces in theater and internationally.

In an accompanying press release, the lead author of that study, Todd Helmus says, ““The central feature of consumer marketing is: know your target audience so you can satisfy their needs. The U.S. armed forces need to know who the civilian populations of Iraq and Afghanistan are, apply that knowledge through day-to-day operations, and monitor how those civilian populations perceive U.S. operations in their countries. Then the military can adjust operations to get more civilian support.”

Michael Ignatieff, a Canadian Member of Parliament who very nearly became the leader of the Canadian Liberal Party, wants to explain how he may have been on the wrong side of this whole Iraq business.
Who, you might wonder, would care about Ignatieff's intellectual turnabout? I, too, thought it might be his Canadian voters, fellow citizens, etc. but we both must be wrong for Ignatieff chose to publish his thoughts on this Iraq stuff via a long essay in the magazine that is handed out free as part of the Sunday edition of the New York Times. New York is not in Canada — for those who don't have an atlas handy — but is, in fact, part of another country called the United States.
For foreign visitors to this blog, I feel compelled to point out that there are, in fact, several print outlets in Canada whose editors would likely have been more than pleased to consider publishing Ignatieff's essay.

Why just the other day, Canada's weekly newsmagazine, Maclean's, did 30-plus pages, on the Conrad Black verdict! Such excess, it seemed to me, was plainly a desperate cry from the editors of that magazine that they had lots of room to publish anything — anything! — if only people like Ignatieff would (please, pretty please!) send their submissions in.

Ah well …

So: as there is at least another eight or nine Canadian voters, fellow citizens, etc. (I hope) who read this blog, I'm pleased to add to Ignatieff's readership by encouraging all to read his essay, which includes the following:

The unfolding catastrophe in Iraq has condemned the political judgment of a president. But it has also condemned the judgment of many others, myself included, who as commentators supported the invasion. …

I’ve learned that good judgment in politics looks different from good judgment in intellectual life. Among intellectuals, judgment is about generalizing and interpreting particular facts as instances of some big idea. In politics, everything is what it is and not another thing. Specifics matter more than generalities. Theory gets in the way . . .

So how've you been?
My family and I have just enjoyed a restful month of summer holiday, part of which we spent in Atlantic Canada. I'm afraid I did my bit to contribute to lobster overfishing … and I'm not one bit sorry (although probably a little bit heavier)
I'm getting ready to head back to work tomorrow and have been going through some e-mail that has piled up over the last little while. Here's some exchanges that were posted to a list I subscribe to for journalists who are into using data analysis to dig out new kinds of stories. Most of the journalists on that list are based in the United States and, apparently, there is some discussion that the “Media” somehow contributed to the collapse of the bridge in Minneapolis. Here's part of that discussion:

[Some of you] might be interested in today's online chat by Washington Post media columnist Howard Kurtz (), which pushed my blood pressure into quadruple digits with some discussion of coverage — or lack thereof — on the issue of bridge safety.
An email I just sent to Mr. Kurtz:

From your chat today:

Louisville, Colo.: Hi Howard,
Amid the calls for increasing taxes after the Minnesota bridge collapse, the media has done almost no presentation of what is actually being spent on infrastructure maintenance and new construction.
Is this because it's difficult to research or because editors don't believe that readers are interested in actual numbers?
In general, there is a lot of reporting about new legislation, but very little reporting about how effectively governments actually spend money.
Howard Kurtz: I couldn't agree more with your last point. I do think in the wake of the Minneapolis collapse that there has been a lot of reporting on how many bridges are deemed structurally deficient and how much money is spent on maintenance, especially in local newspapers and on local stations. But where were these stories before? A few outlets did a good job, but journalists, like politicians, prefer to focus on things that are new: A new project, a new program, a new plan. Maintenance of infrastructure is considered boring — until a bridge collapses and people die. You see the same pattern with other federal agencies: How many pieces were written about the dysfunction at FEMA before Katrina?
Dallas: Why so few stories on bridge repair before the accident? Reporters would rather write, and ask questions, about haircuts. …
Howard Kurtz: Apparently the big news in Minnesota was a major appropriation for a new Twins stadium. Now we learn there are about 150,000 bridges across the country that are rated as “structurally deficient.” Would have been a good story for someone. Actually, I'm sure we'll learn that a handful of journalists did point this out, but it hardly received widespread media attention.

This drives me absolutely insane. The problem with bridges is decidedly NOT that the media have failed to pay attention. It's another frustrating example of how pointing out a problem is not the same as solving the problem.
It took me about 30 seconds on the IRE website to find major investigative projects on bridge safety, all from 2001 or later, by The Oregonian, the Oakland Tribune, the Cleveland Plain Dealer, the Cincy Enquirer, the KC Star, the Boston Globe and a network affiliate in Tampa, Fla., as well as investigations by smaller media outlets in places like Paducah, Ky., and Columbia, Mo. In almost every case, the reports used the National Bridge Inventory, the same federal database that produced all those “how many bridges are structurally deficient?” stories in the wake of the Minnesota collapse.
Those stories all turned up so quickly because every computer-assisted reporter on the planet knows about the bridge inventory. Many have used it or at least have it at their fingertips. The bad-bridge story is, at this point, a staple of computer-assisted and investigative reporting. We all knew immediately where to go for the data.
Of course, few if any of those stories have solved the problem of inadequate spending or maintenance on bridges. When government or the voters fail to pay attention to the warnings reporters sound, that is NOT the same thing as the media ignoring a problem. Any public servant displaying actual brain waves had plenty of information to go on, the vast majority of it provided by the media that your chatters, and you, bashed today.
Gordon Trowbridge
Washington Bureau
The Detroit News

A reporter from USA Today jumps in:

Interesting.
A quick Nexis search turns up hundreds of relevant, mainstream print stories on structurally deficient bridges. Rather than writing them all down, I started looking for states where there HASN'T been a story on bridges. East of the Mississippi I come up with only Maine and Mississippi where there hasn't been coverage, though perhaps someone knows of coverage in those states? Nearly all are lengthy reports in the past two to three years (before August 2007).
West of the Mississippi, there's Hawaii, California, Colorado, Oregon, Oklahoma, Kansas, though I'm sure there are more. Not to mention national stories.

And here's a TV reporter from Baltimore, MD:

These stories aren't “boring” — people really care about their bridges. Baltimore City got cracking right away on three of the top 5 bridges we profiled in a story four years ago. For a city that doesn't get much done, it was remarkable.
Tisha Thompson
Investigative Reporter
WMAR-TV Baltimore