HAPPY FIFTIETH BIRTHDAY TO ALFRED E. NEUMAN — and a lesson for those who claim that they’re being “suppressed” today:

The era was the 1950s, the gray flannel fifties, and Mad magazine, which began publishing early in the decade, was so subversive that the FBI actually investigated it, sometimes sending agents to visit the editors and, in the words of an FBI document, “firmly and severely admonish them.”

Mad’s reaction was to draw funny cartoons of J. Edgar Hoover.

Note to Ted Rall: they were funny cartoons.

MISSING TROOPS IN AFGHANISTAN? This story from the Frontier Post says there are 40. It’s not a tremendously reliable source, and I haven’t seen anything on this elsewhere, but here’s the link for what it’s worth.

MERYL YOURISH reflects on the media’s unwillingness to call the Chechen hostage-takers terrorists:

In my lexicon, guerrilla fighters and rebels are names for the people fighting military forces and choosing military targets. The second you move on to deliberately targeting civilians, you are no longer anything but a terrorist. But hey, what do I know? Here’s the AP description of the scene . . . .

Captors. Gunmen. Hostage-takers. Not terrrorists, though many of them were clad in the latest of bomb-belt fashions. Dozens of their hostages are dead today, many wounded, and these simple “rebels” are described as above.

The terrorists have won the language war. Or is it the multicultis and the PC crowds? Certainly, the newsroom staffs across the globe have succumbed to the mindset of—captives. Why else are they so afraid to call a bloodthirsty killer a terrorist?

When is a terrorist not a terrorist? When the media say so.

Mark my words: this is more likely to breed prejudice and vigilantism than to prevent it.

A PALESTINIAN WOMAN was dragged from her home and killed in an atrocity that probably won’t get much attention because it was conducted by Palestinians.

SPEAKING OF CNN — they’re now calling John Muhammad “John Williams,” in an apparent policy of only calling people by adopted Muslim names when they’re not terrorists. (They don’t call Muhammad Ali “Cassius Clay,” now do they?)

This seems to be part of an overall move to “de-Islamicize” the sniper case. For the authorities, there are two obvious motivations for this. First, if it’s “not terrorism,” then the fact that it happened isn’t a failure of “anti-terrorism.” Second, to the extent that people buy this it makes the anti-American Islamic movement look weaker. For the PC forces of the media, it probably appears necessary to ensure that mobs of peasants with torches and pitchforks won’t set out for the nearest mosque. (Though in fact such distortions make such violence more, not less, likely in my opinion, by breeding distrust of the authorities.)

Anyway, here’s the actual bin Laden fatwa, which clearly encompasses individual acts of terror against America. So the notion that an Islamic terrorist has to be a card-carrying member of Al Qaeda to be a genuine terrorist is absurd under its own terms. Excerpt:

The ruling to kill the Americans and their allies–civilians and military–is an individual duty for every Muslim who can do it in any country in which it is possible to do it, in order to liberate the al-Aqsa Mosque and the holy mosque from their grip, and in order for their armies to move out of all the lands of Islam, defeated and unable to threaten any Muslim. This is in accordance with the words of Almighty God, “and fight the pagans all together as they fight you all together,” and “fight them until there is no more tumult or oppression, and there prevail justice and faith in God.” . . .

We — with God’s help — call on every Muslim who believes in God and wishes to be rewarded to comply with God’s order to kill the Americans and plunder their money wherever and whenever they find it.

(Emphasis added.) Now this doesn’t tell us the specific motivations of John Muhammad, but it does make clear that claims that people who act without a direct connection to Al Qaeda, or people who also rob liquor stories, can’t be Ladenite terrorists are just, well, wrong.

(Fatwa link via Neal Boortz). NOTE: Reader Haggai Elitzur has sent this 1998 analysis of the Fatwa by Bernard Lewis from Foreign Affairs. Lewis’s translation differs slightly; Elitzur says it’s better, but I’m not in a position to judge. Don’t miss this point in which Lewis notes that that even if most Muslims disagree with this kind of reasoning (and they do) only a few need believe it to create problems. STILL MORE: Aziz Poonawalla emails that it’s not a real fatwa, but a call to hirabah (senseless or stupid war), and sends this link to a discussion on alt.muslim on the subject.

UPDATE: And as people have tried to minimize the Al Qaeda connection to the Bali blast, too, it’s worth remembering that bin Laden threatened Australia last year based on its role in the independence of East Timor.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Reid Stott emails this link to the arrest warrant, which uses the name “John Williams.” He adds: ” agree with what you’re saying re: playing down the adopted Muslim name, but it isn’t CNN that’s doing it.” Well, it isn’t just CNN. As I said, the government has an interest in playing down this connection, too.

YET ANOTHER UPDATE: Jay Caruso responds.

STILL MORE: Then there’s this from The Smoking Gun:

A jovial, laughing John Allen Muhammad can be heard on an official audio recording of the alleged sniper’s appearance last year in Pierce County District Court to formally change his name. In April 2001, Muhammad made a brief appearance before Judge Molly Davis to request that his name be formally changed from John Allen Williams for “religion purposes” (he had converted to Islam years earlier). When Davis granted the name change after only a few perfunctory questions, Muhammad joked, “I feel cheated,” since he was not called on to present witnesses or paperwork or approach the bench. “These are fairly routine,” Davis said.

(Emphasis added). There’s streaming audio of the hearing there, and lots of other links. Reader Allan Gornow, who sends the link, remarks: “Perhaps Ted Turner will provide some decent computers to his news operation so they can access significant information about serious stories.”

ANOTHER UPDATE: Bill Herbert says I’ve gone off the deep end on this issue. Well, I was thinking about why this bugs me so much while I was shopping, Lileks-like, at Target. What this reminds me of is the Administration’s absurd claim last year that no one could possibly have foreseen the 9/11 attacks. It may have been true that the failure to prevent the attacks was entirely non-culpable — but the claim that they were utterly unforeseeable was so absurd that it was an insult.

Likewise, it may well turn out that — despite rather a lot of suggestive evidence — the sniper attacks by a guy named Muhammad who said he supported the 9/11 attackers and who seems to have had a lot of money and airplane tickets for a homeless guy will turn out to be pure, garden-variety nuttiness. But that doesn’t change the fact that a lot of people seem to be bending over backward to be sure it looks that way, and that’s why I’m harping on the issue.

LAST UPDATE: Natalie Solent explains what I mean.

APPARENTLY CNN DOESN’T CARE, but the news from Algeria is pretty horrifying:

The Algerian news agency says suspected Islamic extremists have killed 21 people from the same family, including a three-month-old baby. The attack took place in the north-western province of Chlef.

Five other people were reported to be in a serious condition with bullet wounds to the head.

How come this stuff doesn’t get covered?

TARNISHING THE IMAGE OF ISLAM: SKBubba is concerned that some people may get the wrong idea from recent events.

BELLESILES UPDATE: Erin O’Connor worries that Bellesiles isn’t unusual, but is just the tip of the academic-corruption iceberg:

There were peer reviewers who did not do their job when Bellesiles first began publishing his work on early American gun ownership, and there were the editors who chose them. There were editors who ignored the attempts of scholars such as Clayton Cramer to alert them to problems with Bellesiles’ work and there were publishing houses that did not see past the chance to make a buck and a splash. There were prize committees that decorated Bellesiles with top professional honors.

I cannot speak for the quality of Bellesiles’ training, nor do I know any more than anyone else about where in his work methodological carelessness cedes to blatant falsification. But I do know something about what graduate education in the humanities looks like, and I know something, too, about how low on the list of scholarly priorities such non-flashy things as thorough documentation and judicious restraint are. Until we start interrogating our systems of peer review, our patterns of professional reward, and the professional training we do, or don’t do, in our Ph.D. programs, we have not yet begun to address the issues the Bellesiles case raises.

Well, Bellesiles’ behavior was extraordinary — but that doesn’t mean that there aren’t a lot of other problems out there. I agree that peer review is highly overrated as a means of catching fraud. Peer review is pretty good at catching unsound methodologies, but true frauds just fake the data, and peer reviewers don’t double-check those.

UPDATE: Chris Fountain emails that the story isn’t in the print edition of today’s New York Times.

ANOTHER UPDATE: John Bono thinks he knows what’s coming next.

YET ANOTHER UPDATE: Megan McArdle is offering a prize to the first reader who spots a journalist or academic “making reference to, without irony, Bellesiles work “proving” that early Americans didn’t have a lot of guns.”

Like the bogus Marc Herold study on Afghan civilian casualties, I imagine that Bellesiles’ work will live on. And I’m still waiting for a public retraction on the matter from reviewers like Garry Wills. But I’m not holding my breath. Don’t miss this post from Megan, either.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Megan has a winner. Well, sort of. Personally, I think people should be given at least a few days to update their web pages.

HERE’S AN UPDATE on the Russian hostage rescue, which appears to have gone well, though not quite as well as it appeared late last night. Apparently 67 hostages are dead, out of about 750. Considering that the building (and the terrorists) were wired with suicide explosives, that’s good.

Interestingly, the report claims that the Russians used a sleeping gas to incapacitate people. I’m somewhat skeptical of this, since knockout gases have been the holy grail of nonlethal-weapons research and as far as I know there haven’t been any good ones developed. Then again, it’s not like I follow the field that closely.

We should be grateful that the Russians managed this so well, as it makes a repetition of these tactics less likely.

UPDATE: There’s more coverage here from the Moscow Times, which is spinning this very positively. I think it is positive, but the spin is quite evident.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Perry DeHavilland is very happy with this outcome, and says that in the long run it’s always safer not to give in to terrorist demands — which is, of course, true.

THE NEW SMARTERHARPERSINDEX is up!

Harper’s repeats statistics already discredited in print by Matt Welch, and seems incapable of reading a UN document. In other words, a pretty typical effort.

CNN IS REPORTING that Russian forces are in control of the theater and Chechen leader Barayev is dead. (But he’s been reported dead before more than once — and note the Wahhabi connection.) That’s all at the moment — reports are still rather fragmentary and confused.

UPDATE: Here’s what Reuters has, but it’s pretty skimpy. CNN says approximately 20 dead, but it’s not clear how many are hostages and how many are terrorists.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Here’s a longer story from UPI. And here’s the AP story.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Here’s the latest on what appears to have been a fairly successful antiterrorist rescue mission. And Bill Quick has some thoughts.

THE POST HAS THE SNIPER LETTER up in PDF. Tony Adragna has a link and some comments.

UH-OH. Explosions and gunfire near the theater in Moscow. Meanwhile Damian Penny observes:

So, in the capital of the world’s second leading nuclear power, hundreds of people are being held hostage by terrorists who are almost certainly connected to the people who murdered 3,000 civilians on 9/11. As we speak, the final showdown between security forces and the terrorists may be beginning. And what are the 24-hour news channels showing?

CNN has Connie Chung talking about the sniper. (Look, they got the fucker, alright?) CTV NewsNet is stuck on its CRTC-mandated 15-minute loop. (Top story: the sniper. When I watched it a couple of hours ago, the Moscow hostage-taking was not even mentioned.) And CBC Uselessworld Newsworld, funded by the Canadian taxpayer to provide an alternative to the horrible, shallow, corporate American news networks, is showing a shocking expose of burlesque houses. (A half hour ago, they were showing Fashion File.) Incredible.

Sigh.

WILL THE LAST BLOGGER TO LEAVE SAN FRANCISCO please turn out the lights?

AN, ER, “IMPERIAL ‘MISTING,'” by Misha, of the recent New York Times article on John Muhammad’s rifle.

IT’S NOT ABOUT BELLESILES, but John Rosenberg has a long post on the work of Jon Weiner, best known to readers of InstaPundit as Bellesiles’ last defender in print, who is described as The Nation’s “academic commissar.” Unlike Rosenberg, I never worked at The Nation, and some of this is inside baseball, but there may be some readers who find it interesting.

BARRELFISKING: Rachel Lucas replies to Michael Moore.

BELLESILES UPDATE: Here’s the story from the Emory Wheel, which will have a longer treatment next week. Meanwhile, Eugene Volokh has this to say about two of Bellesiles’ biggest critics:

I know Lindgren in person, and Cramer by e-mail, and have always had high regard for their work, which was indispensable in bringing this matter to light, and helping correct the historical record. This is not an occasion to congratulate them; but it is one to thank them (and the others who researched the issue and helped publicize the research) for doing well a difficult, unpleasant, but important job.

That seems about right. (Scroll down to here for more).

UPDATE: Reader Richard Heddleson writes:

More interesting than Muhammad’s last name is the total blackout on the wire services of Bellesiles’ resignation from Emory. If this had been Charles Murray or Abigail Thernstrom being forced to resign you know it would have been at the top of the paper.

Checking the wire-service search engines via Drudge, it appears he’s right. There’s no mention whatsoever of the resignation. Disgraceful.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Here’s a summary of the investigative report, from History News Network.

ONE MORE: There’s an AP story finally, though it rather glosses over the charges against Bellesiles, putting him in the same category as other historians accused of using insufficiently attributed quotes.

WALTER OLSON has a huge collection of links on the Moscow terrorist attack. Most worrisome is Asparagirl’s fear that this could happen here.

UPDATE: Jen Taliaferro notes that London theaters are increasing security and suggests that those on Broadway might want to do the same.

THESE ARE OBVIOUSLY ANTIGLOBO TYPES who showed up a day early for tomorrow’s “peace” rally.

JONAH GOLDBERG WRITES ABOUT RACIAL PROFILING and the D.C. sniper case:

Interestingly, James Allen Fox, a respected criminologist at Northeastern University–who favored the Caucasian icy-loner scenario–collects a database of sniper homicides. He found that out of 514 sniper murders between 1976 and 2000, 55% of the murderers were white. This, of course, would mean that whites are actually underrepresented among the ranks of sniper-serial killers. One can only assume that in a better world this increasingly influential subculture will look more like America.

Speaking of subcultures, various news organizations delved deeply into the sniper subculture, explaining how the mantra of “one shot, one kill” was increasingly popular among “ex-military” and “police” types. Much of this was egged on by Tom Diaz, an analyst with an antigun group called the Violence Policy Center. Mr. Diaz told the Chicago Tribune. “We do not yet know what specific firearm is being used.” But “it is clear the gun industry stands ready to arm and train anyone with the fantasy of being a real live sniper.”

This may be true, but as sniper groups have been insisting for the past month, it was never likely that the Washington-area murderer was a professionally trained sniper at all. He used the wrong ammo and shot from a very short range when compared with a pro or serious amateur.

No, the most relevant story line about John Allen Muhammad is not his stint in the Army–mainly as a combat engineer. It is that last name of his, which he assumed only in the past year or so. Indeed, throughout the month of sniper coverage few news organizations would entertain the idea that the serial sniper was directed or inspired by al Qaeda. A few op-eds appeared in late October, but generally speaking the networks and major newspapers only brought up the idea to shoot it down.

It seemed at times that many members of the press were much more eager to return to cultural politics as usual, which in this case meant getting back to smacking around white conservative men, even by proxy. When those two Hispanic immigrants were mistakenly arrested at a phone booth this week, the cameras seemed to linger lovingly over the Bush/Cheney, Marine Corps and NRA bumper stickers on their van. When an unsavory former military man was wanted for questioning in Baltimore, the New York Daily News was ready with a headline: “HUNT ARMED RACIST: Supremacist sought in sniping spree.”

I wonder how many of these folks are embarrassed about this now? Not nearly enough, I’d guess.

UPDATE: John Hawkins comments on the “sniper subculture.”

A WHILE BACK I put up this post based on a Wired story about an independent musician who said he was being screwed by eBay. Now Greg Beato says that the whole thing may have been bogus.

BELLESILES UPDATE: Michael Bellesiles has resigned from the Emory faculty:

October 25, 2002

Robert A. Paul, Interim Dean of Emory College

I have accepted the resignation of Michael Bellesiles from his position as Professor of History at Emory University, effective December 31, 2002.

Although we would not normally release any of the materials connected with a case involving the investigation of faculty misconduct in research, in light of the intense scholarly interest in the matter I have decided, with the assent of Professor Bellesiles as well as of the members of the Investigative Committee, to make public the report of the Investigative Committee appointed by me to evaluate the allegations made against Professor Bellesiles (none of the supporting documents, however, are being made public). The text of the report is now available online at www.emory.edu/central/NEWS/.

Emory considers the report authoritative.

In conducting this investigation, Emory has scrupulously observed the procedures laid out in our published policy statement regarding matters of alleged research misconduct. Throughout the investigation process our efforts have been guided by the objectives of maintaining the highest standards of scholarly integrity, while also striving to ensure the confidentiality of the proceedings and to protect the rights of a member of Emory’s faculty.

The Investigative Committee was chaired by Stanley N. Katz, Professor of Public and International Affairs, Princeton University, and included Hanna H. Gray, Judson Distinguished Professor of History Emerita and President Emerita, University of Chicago, and Laurel Thatcher Ulrich, James Duncan Phillips Professor of History, Harvard University. I hereby express my appreciation to these distinguished scholars for contributing their effort and expertise to the resolution of this matter of such great importance not only to Emory but to the wider scholarly community. Committee members have stated that they will not discuss or respond to questions about the investigation or the report.

Emory also wishes to express its thanks and appreciation to Professor Bellesiles for his many years of service and his many valuable contributions to the University.

Emory now considers the investigation of allegations of research misconduct against Professor Bellesiles in connection with his book Arming America: The Origins of a National Gun Culture to be concluded and resolved.

Here’s a link to the report mentioned above, and here’s a link to Bellesiles’ own statement.

UPDATE: A historian reader writes: “Yowza… I just read the Emory report. Even taking account of the dodgy language for the benefit of a colleague, that is mighty damning stuff. I could teach a whole semester on research methodology and ethics from this.”

Well, somebody should. Clayton Cramer has extracted some highlights from the Emory report. Oh, and this post by Charles Murtaugh from a while back is worth reading, too. And this piece by Don Williams from May explores the impact of Bellesiles’ problems on the gun control movement.

UPDATE: Oh, and I can’t believe I forgot to post this link to James Lindgren’s Yale Law Journal piece on Bellesiles’ errors, which the investigative committee obviously found very significant.

THE GUN ISSUE looks like a loser for Democrats even in Maryland according to this poll:

Kathleen Kennedy Townsend recently called for expanding Maryland’s ballistic fingerprinting law to include rifles, while Bob Ehrlich has remarked that a few of Maryland existing gun laws should be reexamined to judge their effectiveness. Maryland voters have their own opinions: Fifty-three percent agreed that “[w]e already have enough gun control laws – we need to better enforce the laws already on the books.” Thirty-six percent statewide felt that “[w]e need more and stronger gun control laws.” Eight percent took the opposite view, that “[w]e have too many gun control laws now.” The remaining 3% gave no answer.

Better enforcement of existing laws is the favored position in every demographic subgroup in the survey, except among Democrats and residents of the Washington suburbs. Fifty percent of Democrats, and 54% of voters in the DC suburbs, say we need more and stronger gun control laws. Among undecided voters, just 31% opt for more and stronger laws, with 61% saying that we need better enforcement of existing gun control statutes.

That “better enforcement of existing gun control statutes” answer is a problem, of course, given the recently publicized failures that Maryland has had in that department.

BARBERS ARE NOW DEMANDING AN APOLOGY FROM JESSE JACKSON for his comments about the movie “Barbershop.” Heh. It’s a bad year for Jesse:

Members of the National Association of Cosmetologists led by Chief Executive James Stern Thursday said Jackson erred when, in September, he demanded the film’s makers apologize for for jokes about U.S. civil rights icons Martin Luther King, Jr. and Rosa Parks made in the movie.

Stern told Reuters his group had screened the film, a comedy starring Ice Cube as the young owner of a community barbershop, and the 100 or so African-American cosmetologists at the screening found nothing offensive about the movie.

“Reverend Jackson did not consider the future of black filmmakers,” said Stern, adding that now, every time a black filmmaker produces a movie or writes a screenplay, they are going to have to consider whether they will offend some group, which in turn will stifle their creativity.

“We, as blacks, have to let the movie studios know that when he (Jackson) is wrong, we’re willing to speak out for ourselves,” Stern said.

Stern added that members of his group have seen their businesses hurt by Jackson’s comment, and he said if the leader of the Rainbow/PUSH Coalition did not apologize himself, his group would sue Jackson for defamation of character.

A Jackson spokeswoman was not immediately available to comment.

I’ll bet she wasn’t. I think it’s time for Jesse to retire. There’s no need for a “spokesman” once people are willing to speak for themselves.