THOMAS LIPSCOMB: “The Truth, John Kerry, and The New York Times.”

CHINESE BLOGGERS REFLECT on the Tiananmen Square massacre’s anniversary.

Plus, a memorial video at YouTube. It’s entitled “Not Settled,” and it’s pretty strong stuff.

ALAN GARCIA appears to have won big in Peru. Background on the election here.

FROM THE TOO-GOOD-TO-BE-TRUE DEPARTMENT:

In short, just about everything Bush said in February 2004 to justify his support for a federal amendment has been undermined by subsequent experience.

Now, the stunning news. In light of experience, it appears President Bush has rethought the question. He’s called a press conference Monday to address the issue of a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage.

Heh. Read the whole thing.

TIANANMEN SQUARE remembered in pictures, over at Slate.

BARCEPUNDIT:

DID YOU KNOW that the Zapatero administration (you know, the “no blood for oil”, “Bush is killing innocents” and “let’s get out of this illegal war” one) just gave Spain’s highest military decoration to… gasp… can hardly say it… to… to the US Army Chief of Staff?

He observes: “Maybe things are not going so bad there, after all.”

IRANIAN OFFICIALS torturing protesters to get them to say that the United States is behind the protests, according to this report.

DON SURBER IS FISKING THE NEW YORK TIMES EDITORIAL on Haditha. Read the whole thing, and fire off a copy to Bill Keller.

The clearly evident Bush-bashing glee over this stuff is both pathetic and poisonous.

UPDATE: Dan Riehl compares the amount of coverage of Haditha and the terror busts.

ANOTHER UPDATE: A reader emails: “So how long before Anderson Cooper reports that the mayor of Haditha has stated that there are rampant murders and rapes going on inside the Haditha Superdome?”

That hasn’t happened yet?

Look, this is a serious matter. But the gleeful piling-on — and there’s a lot of that, as Surber demonstrates — makes it seem less serious, not moreso. Those who would reduce war crimes to mere partisan footballs are not manning the bulwarks of moral seriousness, however much they might adopt that pose.

I recommend this column by Mark Steyn, too: “A superpower that wallows in paranoia and glorifies self-loathing cannot endure and doesn’t deserve to.” I could say the same thing for alleged “flagship” media operations.

“YOU DON’T NEED PAPERS FOR VOTING:” Just for really important things, like buying sudafed.

AS I SUSPECTED, the Canadian terrorist arrests seem to be part of a transnational operation involving law enforcement in Canada, Britain, and the United States. And communications intercepts do appear to have played an important role.

AUSTIN BAY looks at Haditha diplomacy.

It all goes down to what Peter Beinart said in our interview the other day (beginning about 12:00 in):

The way we show the world that we mean what we say about democracy and human rights is by acting well. That means on a thing like Haditha by not trying to cover up, by being absolutely open and saying ‘We are capable of being barbaric like other peoples are, under conditions of extreme stress and without legal restraint. But what makes us different from them is the way re respond to that.’ We use it as an opportunity to show that we’re different from our enemies because we bring our own people to justice.

That’s right, and I note that it has been the pattern of the U.S. military in this war. Compare this to the record of, say, the United Nations where troop misbehavior is concerned.

Not that the critics will do so.

UPDATE: Here, by the way, is an oped by Beinart in today’s L.A. Times.

Also, reader Kern Parker asks: “I’m interested in your thoughts on how Abu Ghraib fits in to this pattern.”

Well, in a word — perfectly. In fact, though media folks took credit for “breaking” the story, it was already under investigation by the Pentagon. See this timeline of events from The Mudville Gazette. In fact, if I recall correctly, the Pentagon had even issued a press release about the investigation, which was ignored, before the story “broke.”

It was then carpet-bombed by the press, which chose to treat it as emblematic of the entire war effort, with much mutual back-patting for the coverage, while barely admitting that the matter had been under investigation already.

I don’t claim that the military is perfect, of course. I just think that those who claim that anything less than perfection constitutes a pandemic of evil are being dishonest and unfair.

MORE STILL: Hmm. Speaking of the United Nations:

THE United Nations has ordered staff in East Timor not to co-operate with Australian Federal Police investigating the massacre of 12 unarmed Timorese officers by renegade soldiers, prompting allegations of a cover-up.

An email from the UN’s deputy representative in Timor, Pakistani General Anis Bajwa, had been circulated to all staff, including employees evacuated to Australia, directing them not to assist AFP detectives investigating the worst atrocity since the violence of 1999.

A copy of the email had been passed to Australia’s Embassy in Dili, outraged diplomats and AFP sources confirmed to AAP.

Earlier today the UN denied the email existed, but UN spokesman Bob Sullivan tonight contacted AAP and admitted a directive had been sent out in an email to all staff.

I eagerly await an outraged editorial from the Times.

ROGER SIMON: “I can’t say I’m surprised it took eight paragraphs before the New York Times deigned to tell us what might be behind (have motivated) the arrest of 17 people in Ontario over the last couple of days. In fact it takes them six paragraphs before they even name any names. And of course they hasten first to make sure we know most of these men (not yet identified as Islamists) are “young people,” shades of the French linguistic obsession with les jeunes, lest we might think them representative of a hostile ideology. This political bowdlerization is accomplished in paragraph four. Think for a moment how the Times would have constructed an article (has constructed many articles) about the malfeasance of US servicemen. They sure wouldn’t bury the lede.”

UPDATE: The sounds of silence.

ANOTHER UPDATE: More on the Canadian effort here.

And more on the post-bust spin here. There’s also lots more over at Canadian newsblog Newsbeat1.

MORE: In the comments to Roger’s post, a hypothesis on why the Big Media tend to underplay the Islamist angle on terror:

Just like our own elites: they truly believe that – if not carefully monitored, us People will riot and string up Muslims from every lamp-post at the least provocation. In their view, the Military, especially, is certain to run amuck at any time (thus the obsessing over Abu Ghraib, and now, jumping all over Haditha) – and, of course, probably has, almost continuously, and Rumsfeld, etc has Covered it Up.

And with Bush in power, the Elites are wringing their hands, knowing that the RedNecks are rampant, uncontrolled, willing and able to do ANYTHING!!!!

Though in fact, it’s the Big Media that tend to act like a hysterical mob more often than do ordinary people.

WELL, I FLUNKED THIS QUIZ:

Q: Was U.S. economic growth higher during the time John Snow was Treasury Secretary, or during the time Robert Rubin was Treasury Secretary?

A: It was the same , 3.8 percent.

Poor Snow could never get a break. Funny, though, it seems that we heard a lot more good news about the economy when Rubin was in. Go figure.

MORE PROTESTS AND VIOLENCE IN IRAN.

UPDATE: Lots of people are surprised that this isn’t getting more big-media coverage. So am I.

ANOTHER UPDATE: No comfort from Karl Vick.

But at least we’ve got Jimmy Carter for comic relief.

A TERROR RING THAT PLANNED OKLAHOMA-CITY-STYLE BOMBINGS has reportedly been smashed in Canada. Interestingly, it seems that Internet monitoring played a key role.

It’s also interesting that this happened at almost the same time as the major bust in London. So what’s cooking here in the United States?

UPDATE: Brendan Loy has more, plus a complaint about Reuters’ coverage, which leaves out a lot of details about the Islamist character of the defendants: “Reuters didn’t see fit to mention any of that, or to specify whether the arrested terrorists are Muslims, or Arabs, or Islamists, or Al Qaeda members/sympathizers, or… anything. From the Reuters article, you wouldn’t know whether these guys are Osama bin Laden’s band of brothers, or a band of angry rednecks from Saskatchewan. Well, actually, maybe we do sorta know, because if they were angry rednecks from Saskatchewan, I’m sure Reuters would have told us that.”

Indeed.

MORE: Some additional background here:

Mathers said an investigation of this magnitude by INSET would been an “accumulative effort” involving informants, electronic intercepts of communication, and “hours and hours and hours of surveillance — very boring surveillance too.”

But he said it’s most likely human sources — acquaintances of those planning a terrorist attack, or people somehow linked to the plans themselves — who would have provided the most vital information that would provide enough evidence for arrests.

“Electronic sources don’t always provide you with enough timely information. You need human beings,” he said.

That’s certainly true. I hope we’re keeping a close eye on likely terrorists here in the United States.

HADITHA PHOTO FAKERY?

TOM MAGUIRE:

Are Michal Kranish, Boston Globe reporter and Douglas Brinkley, historian and Kerry hagiographer, capable of eliciting relevant information during an interview? If so, their own interview notes might shed some light on a Swift Boat mystery the NY Times chose to resurrect last Saturday. The puzzle – how can four men fit in a three man boat? Answer – they can’t, so who is lying, or misremembering, when they say they were?

I confess that my swift-boat attention span has pretty much expired, but Tom is looking for help from military readers, so if you have any to offer be sure to drop by.

AT BLOGCRITICS, a look at Haditha, the laws of war, and terrorists.

UPDATE: Reader Peter Ingemi was somewhat upset that some people on the left construed an email of his as calling for civil war against antiwar folks. It’s updated here, along with an email from a reader on the left calling for civil war against people on the right. Or something like that.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Peter Ingemi sends a followup email:

I’ve been doing a little surfing today and for the fun of it did a Technorati search of me. It is a new experience to be villified all over the internet by a bunch of people who I’ve never met and am unlikely to.

I was about to start answering some of the nonsense when the Sicilian in me kicked in. It is a waste of time effort and pixels and the responses and counter responses would eat up time I would be spending actually having a life and like I’ve said before Sicilians are used to being thought of poorly. It is almost like reading newspapers from the old south pre 1860, there is a mindset so entrenched that nothing is going to change it and what’s worse it gets reinforced over and over again. It’s almost a cult. I’ve only seen this for an hour, you must get it every day by the bagful.

How do you put up with it?

Practice. Plus, like Jeff Goldstein, I crap bigger than them. Much bigger. . . .

WIRELESS INTERNET on JetBlue.

AUSTIN BAY looks at the latest from Nigeria: “This is one of those conflicts taking place that has genuine, measureable global economic effects.”

BEWARE the two-minute snark. It’s like the two-minute hate, only dumber. Er, and snarkier.

THE WORLD’S LEADING KIDNEYBLOGGER notes an outrage at the National Kidney Foundation.

STAGING THE NEWS: An amusing video roundup.

BIG TERROR RAID IN BRITAIN: 200 cops, health workers, and more. Roundup here.