Monday, March 9, 2009

Correcting Canadian Columnists' Canards

Correcting Canadian Columnists' Canards

March 9, 2009

By: Mike Fegelman

Dear HonestReporting Canada subscriber:                                                     

Syndicated columnists are paid to put forward highly opinionated and sometimes controversial points of view. In contrast to reporters these pundits are not neutral. Their commentaries are printed in various Canadian newspapers to reflect a diverse range of opinion, to add to the marketplace of ideas, and to articulate the various shades of gray on any given subject, especially one as polarized as the Middle East.

While columnists are entitled to their opinions, their own personal politics cannot supersede adherence to strict standards of ethical, accurate, and honest journalism. A columnist who gives expert opinion must also base it on accurate information – anything short of that requires swift corrections.

Haroon Siddiqui Strikes Again

Toronto Star columnist Haroon Siddiqui (well known for his criticisms of Israel) recently claimed in a column he authored on March 1 that Israeli forces had carried out an "attack on a UN-run school."

Contrary to this statement, Israel never attacked the UN-run school. An investigative report by the Globe & Mail's Patrick Martin confirmed underreported Israeli accounts that the IDF accurately returned fire to the location from which it was being shelled by Hamas terrorists who were located across the street from the school.

HonestReporting Canada brought this matter to the attention of Toronto Star editors who commendably acknowledged that Mr. Siddiqui's statement could have been written in a clearer manner. On March 4 the Star promptly issued the following clarification to remedy Mr. Siddiqui's error:

Simpson Skews BBC Poll

Writing in the Globe and Mail on February 9, columnist Jeffrey Simpson (pictured) commented on a recently released BBC World Service Poll which judged the popularity (or lack thereof) of various countries around the World.

In reference to Israel Mr. Simpson wrote:

"Israelis likely do not care and Iranians probably do not know, but theirs are two of the least popular countries in the world. Throw Pakistan into the mix, and the annual BBC World Service poll gives us three of the world's least popular countries." 

"Israelis are accustomed to believing that most of the world is against them, so the poll's result will hardly surprise them. To be precise, the poll asked respondents in 21 countries whether other countries were playing a "positive" or "negative" role in the world. Only 21 per cent of respondents said Israel played a positive role; 71 per cent said it played a negative one. In only one country – the United States – did Israel receive a slightly positive rating."

Contrary to this statement, only "51 per cent" of those polled in the BBC's World Service Poll indicated that Israel played a "negative role" not 71 per cent. Mr Simpson was off by a whopping 20% margin.

In light of this information, we asked Globe and Mail editors to correct Mr. Simpson's factual error. On February 11, the Globe issued the following correction to set the record straight:

Rick Salutin Peddles "Israel Apartheid Week's" 4 Myths

Keeping with the Globe & Mail, columnist Rick Salutin's March 5 column peddled four of the big myths promulgated by "Israel Apartheid Week" organizers. HonestReporting editor Pesach Benson fisked Salutin's polemic:

Myth: The "apartheid" label stems from the security fence. Salutin writes:

"Cabinet minister Jason Kenney calls Israel Apartheid Week "a systematic effort to delegitimize the democratic homeland of the Jewish people" by linking it to racism, a line virtually mouthed by Opposition Leader Michael Ignatieff. That is way too cute. Any "settler state," such as Canada, which took someone else's land, can be seen as illegitimate. But it's an abstract point. "Apartheid" became widely used in this context only when Israel began building what came to be called an apartheid wall, looming over Palestinians, sequestering more land, cutting them off from each other."

Fact: The apartheid label was generated by the rabid participants of the 2001 Durban conference, nearly a whole year before Israel decided to build its security fence.

Myth: The security fence divides the West Bank into "Bantustans." According to Salutin:

"The usage grew as Israel expanded settlements, built Israeli-only roads and set up checkpoints so Palestinians would at best be left with "Bantustans," such as those that apartheid South Africa offered blacks, rather than a true state of their own."

Fact: The fence, checkpoints and roads are for Israel's security, not to segregate people. In 2007, Islamic Jihad chief Ramadan Shalah confirmed as much to Hezbollah's Al-Manar TV that the Israel's security measures effectively thwarts terror attacks.

Myth: Jewish students shouldn't be overly concerned by the campus debate's invective. Salutin says:

"Most of the specifics come down to shouts at protests. As in: "Cries of 'Die, Jew' and 'Get the hell off campus' were heard." The Canadian Jewish Congress's Bernie Farber says he's "never" seen it this bad "on the streets of Toronto and university campuses." Well, I spend lots of time on streets in Toronto and it doesn't look like Kristallnacht to me. But wait, that's glib. It's these images that scare my friends: They evoke Nazi Germany. I know that.

But Nazi Germany wasn't about name-calling and group hate. Those will persist, perhaps always. The Holocaust occurred largely because anti-Semitism was historically rooted and respectable there: religiously, socially, intellectually, politically. Writers and politicians were proudly anti-Semitic. Here, anti-Semitism is unacceptable in all those ways. This whole debate proves it. We should be glad for that, and keep it in perspective."
 

Fact: The Jewish students of 1930s Germany received similar reassurances by people no less well-meaning or enlightened than Salutin. See more sober reactions from McGill's Professor Gil Troy and Israeli Bedouin diplomat Ishmael Khaldi.

Myth: Hamas can accommodate the existence of Israel. According to Salutin:

"Even Hamas has a (nuanced) position on living with Israel. You can look it up."

Fact: Okay, I looked up the Hamas charter. Here's what Salutin confuses for "nuance." According to the charter: "Israel will exist and will continue to exist until Islam will obliterate it, just as it obliterated others before it" (The Martyr, Imam Hassan al-Banna, of blessed memory) . . .  [Peace] initiatives, the so-called peaceful solutions, and the international conferences to resolve the Palestinian problem, are all contrary to the beliefs of the Islamic Resistance Movement. . . There is no solution to the Palestinian problem except by Jihad."

Moreover, on closer look, the charter notes early on Hamas' identification with the Muslim Brotherhood, an international movement with branches in Egypt, Jordan, even the US, and UK. International movements like the Muslim Brotherhood don't have a track record for the kind of nuance Salutin puts his faith in.

How You Can Make A Difference

While Mr. Salutin is entitled to fair comment, he is not immune from receiving legitimate criticism for his comments.

Please send your thoughts to the Globe and Mail by pointing out one of the aforementioned myths and refer to Mr. Salutin's March 5th op-ed entitled "Israel, Apartheid, anti-Semites". Letters to the editor should be sent to letters@globeandmail.com

Please remember to include your name, address and daytime telephone number to ensure your chance for publication on the letters page.
 

 

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VIDEO:Canada Human Rights

VIDEO of CTV PowerPlay Canada Human? Rights Commission?

Iranian S-Elections?

Evolution / Intelligent Design

Legitimate Questions Should Be Discussed

I am reminded of how established "science" has been wrong many times before such as in the case of Piltdown man. So could it be wrong now? Or has it been perfected? Should not reasonable arguments be considered?

We have become a nation of beggars

Terence Corcoran reports in the National Post on Friday, January 16, 2009 that the STIMULUS everyone is yelling for may only work over a short period and may actually MAKE THE ECONOMY WORSE over longer periods.

[Read the article below for the researchers who studied this phenomenon.]

POINTS

- "What if, as a wide and growing school of economists now suspect, the government spending and stimulus theory is a crock that is shovel-ready to be heaved out into the barnyard of economic waste?"

- Even disciples of Keynes, such as Harvard's Greg Mankiw, recently highlighted economic studies that show government spending binges -- shocks, they are sometimes called -- don't seem to help the economy grow. They might even make it worse.

-One of the studies cited by Mr. Mankiw was by two European economists (Andrew Mountford and Harald Uhlig), titled "What are the Effects of Fiscal Shocks?" It looked at big deficit-financed spending increases and found that they stimulate the economy for the first year, but "only weakly" compared with a deficit financed tax cut. The overriding problem is that the deficits crowd out private investment and, over the long run, may make the economy worse. "The resulting higher debt burdens may have long-term consequences which are far worse than the short-term increase in GDP."

-A paper by two economists, including the current chief economist at the International Monetary Fund, Olivier Blanchard, concluded that increased taxes and "increases in government spending have a strong negative effect on private investment spending."

-Roberto Perotti, an Italian economist with links to Columbia University, in "Estimating the Effects of Fiscal Policy in OECD Countries," found nothing but bad news for Keynesians. Economic growth is little changed after big increases in government spending, but there are signs of weakening private investment.

- What we all might logically intuit to be true -- spend government money, especially borrowed money, and you stimulate growth -- has long been thought to be a fallacy by some economists. That thought is now spreading. British economist William Buiter said the massive Obama fiscal stimulus proposals "are afflicted by the Keynesian fallacy on steroids."

The whole article by Terrance Corcoran follows:

Are you "shovel-ready," poised to hit the ground running, or merely desperate for cheap cash to get through the recession? If so, here's your last chance to apply to Ottawa for a piece of the massive government spending-bailout-infrastructure-stimulus operation now being prepared for Finance Minister Jim Flaherty's Jan. 27 budget extravaganza.

To get you going, the National Post has created an all-purpose Stimulus Canada application document. Simply make sure your company/institution fills out the form here to get in on the action.

We're just kidding, of course, or at least we were until our satirical Stimulus Canada General Application Form was mugged by reality, which is rapidly turning out to be funnier than the fanciful idea of a government department called Stimulus Canada. To all intents and purposes, Stimulus Canada already exists.

Government money to flow, the taps are opening, deficits are no problem. The spending, as Stephen Harper said after a meeting with the premiers on Friday, will be "very significant" and there will be "very significant deficits." That could mean new spending of $20-billion and deficits of $40-billion.

Industry groups, corporate opportunists, charities, municipal politicians, arts groups, provincial premiers, tech firms, mining companies, forestry operators, banks, money lenders -- in fact, just about everybody has come forward to get in on Canada's portion of what is turning out to be a mad global government stimulus pandemic.

Each claims to have a plan or an idea that they say would produce jobs, spending, investment and activity that would get Canada through the recession and stimulate the economy.

At some point, though, the clamour of claims and calls becomes absurd, and that point looks to have been crossed the other day in the United States when porn merchant Larry Flint said the U.S. sex industry was falling on hard times, business was down 25%, and it needed a $5-billion slice of the $1.2-billion U.S. stimulus program.

And why not?

Mr. Flint has a point. It is not totally illogical for anyone to think that way. If you spend a dollar somewhere -- whether building a bridge or operating a forest company or buying a car -- it generates activity. And, after all, it's a grand old economic theory, created by John Maynard Keynes, that spending, especially government spending, rolls through the economy on a giant multiplier, piling jobs on jobs, growth on growth.

Except for one problem: What if it's not true? What if, as a wide and growing school of economists now suspect, the government spending and stimulus theory is a crock that is shovel-ready to be heaved out into the barnyard of economic waste?

The Prime Minister, in his comments on Friday, seemed to be riding right into the barnyard. He said the government would be simply "borrowing money that is not being used" and "that business is afraid to invest." By borrowing that money, and turning it over to all the groups and interests looking for part of the stimulus spending, he would be jump-starting activity while the private sector got its legs back.

Even disciples of Keynes, such as Harvard's Greg Mankiw, recently highlighted economic studies that show government spending binges -- shocks, they are sometimes called -- don't seem to help the economy grow. They might even make it worse.

One of the studies cited by Mr. Mankiw was by two European economists (Andrew Mountford and Harald Uhlig), titled "What are the Effects of Fiscal Shocks?" It looked at big deficit-financed spending increases and found that they stimulate the economy for the first year, but "only weakly" compared with a deficit financed tax cut. The overriding problem is that the deficits crowd out private investment and, over the long run, may make the economy worse. "The resulting higher debt burdens may have long-term consequences which are far worse than the short-term increase in GDP."

Two other studies point in the same direction. A paper by two economists, including the current chief economist at the International Monetary Fund, Olivier Blanchard, concluded that increased taxes and "increases in government spending have a strong negative effect on private investment spending."

Roberto Perotti, an Italian economist with links to Columbia University, in "Estimating the Effects of Fiscal Policy in OECD Countries," found nothing but bad news for Keynesians. Economic growth is little changed after big increases in government spending, but there are signs of weakening private investment.

What we all might logically intuit to be true -- spend government money, especially borrowed money, and you stimulate growth -- has long been thought to be a fallacy by some economists. That thought is now spreading. British economist William Buiter said the massive Obama fiscal stimulus proposals "are afflicted by the Keynesian fallacy on steroids."

Over at Stimulus Canada, Mr. Harper's plan looks somewhat more modest and Canada is not in the same fiscal fix as the United States. But Ottawa and the provinces are clearly ready to borrow big wads of money from the future to stimulate the economy today. It's money that is supposedly sitting out there in the timid hands of investors who will be repaid with tax dollars later.

But if that stimulus spending does not generate much fresh economic growth, and the borrowing chews up money that private investors could invest in the future, the shovel-ready brigades who get the cash today will produce only short term gains at the expense of the long term health of the economy.

Educational Purposes Only

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We do not necessarily agree with all links posted here but we include them to bring balance to an unbalanced media.