Interesting Stuff # 76

27 Years Later, a Formal Inquiry Begins Into Khmer Rouge Atrocities (Gee! Wonder when the U.N. will get around to Hezbollah?)

PHNOM PENH, Cambodia, Aug. 1 — More than 27 years after the mass killings and after nearly a decade of wrangling between Cambodia and the United Nations, formal proceedings have begun against surviving leaders of the brutal Khmer Rouge regime.

The media war

In bygone wars, it was often said that the less divulged, the better. Israel's upper echelons - both civilian and military - often conduct themselves as if this were still the case. It isn't. Today's media war is often inseparable from the physical conflict. Neglecting the war of words and images inevitably weakens Israel's ability to pursue its cause on the ground and in the air.
Hizbullah and the Palestinians know the value of propaganda. They often fight their media battles by the dirtiest possible means. An expose in these pages on Thursday by former Sunday Telegraph correspondent Tom Gross revealed that Hizbullah officers supervise CNN reports, that a CBS reporter admitted Hizbullah overseers determine what's filmed, that repeated shots of several downed buildings lend Beirut the erroneous image of devastated WWII Dresden, that journalists are threatened, that Hizbullah holds their passports for ransom, that their analyses are skewed to curry favor, and so on.
Not only doesn't Israel engage in significant preemptive damage control, it often seems resigned to lose by default. The axiomatic official Israeli attitude often seems to be that "the world hates us."
It may indeed deny us a fair shake, but there's a difference between giving up a priori and trying to do something about it. To forfeit without a fight is reckless neglect. It can only impact on Israel's image, its standing abroad, and the pressure on international politicians to take unsympathetic positions, and thus directly on Israel's future well-being.

Roth's False God (Human Rights Watch)

The moral equivalence that has infected him and his organization has, sadly, spread far on much of the left, from the United Nations to the International Red Cross and Amnesty International and the editorialists of the New York Times, who yesterday, stunningly, said any ceasefire they would favor must allow Hezbollah "to claim some sort of victory." That such confusion has not gained traction among American Jews or, for that matter, on the Christian right in this country is testament to the bond of shared values between America and Israel. Those values have a base in something higher than the false god of international law before whom Kenneth Roth has brought a once-idealistic institution so low.

Is Hezbollah on the verge of destroying Lebanon? (Obviously, except to the blind)

And that is what is most potentially worrying. To detract attention away from its own responsibility for the war, Hezbollah may well choose to go on the offensive inside Lebanon, politically and even militarily. Instead of facing Shiite anger, it might opt to redirect it against those Lebanese who, many Shiites feel, failed to satisfactorily sustain the "resistance" in its existential struggle against Israel.
This is the essence of Lebanon's dilemma as the war nears its fourth week. Does Hezbollah agree to integrate itself into the Lebanese political system and disarm? Or does it exploit its substantial reserves of men and weapons to bring all of Lebanon forcibly into line with the party's priorities? The first means the end of Hezbollah as we know it and is a suicide option; the second could bring Lebanon down around everybody's head in renewed civil war. Call it Hezbollah's Samson option.

SEVENTH CIRCUIT OPINES: IBM'S CASH BALANCE PLAN NOT AGE DISCRIMINATORY UNDER ERISA (NOTABLE QUOTES)

That’s where this litigation went off the rails: a phrase dealing with inputs was misunderstood to refer to outputs.

"THE LANGUAGE OF THE MAILED FIST"

Now that the corrupt, Jew hating UN has gotten into the act with a Security Council resolution which, if actually implemented, will stop Israel before completing the destruction of Hezbollah, there will surely be increasing clamor for the U.S. to sit down and talk with dictators Assad of Syria and Ahmadinejad of Iran. It has already begun. This has the all too familiar feel of the late 1930's …when the educated classes in Europe wanted to believe war could be averted through signed diplomatic agreements.

A photojournalist weighs in on the Adnan Hajj scandal

Naturally, there’s one other piece to this puzzle, one that I hesitate to mention because it’s circumstantial at best, and maybe even downright wrong. But I think it’s interesting, so I present it for my readers to make up their own minds.
In 2004, Reuters opened an office in Bangalore, India, staffed with 20 Indian journalists covering “2,000 small to medium-sized American companies” and a team of six editors.
“Reuters admits costs are 60 per cent less in Bangalore than its ‘onshore’ centres in New York, Britain and Singapore,” wrote Randeep Ramesh of The Hindu.
“This is just the beginning for Reuters in Bangalore. The company’s data unit, which archives material for 30,000 global firms, already employs 300 people and will grow by another 300 next year.”
“The average age in the office is 25.”
In the words of one reader, “You get what you pay for.”