Sunday Times' Apology Offered and Accepted

The Guardian reports:
 guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 29 January 2013 19.13 GMT
Statement on Sunday Times Gerald Scarfe cartoon

There was a meeting at 4pm today between representatives of the Jewish community and the Sunday Times senior editorial team and News International corporate affairs.

In the meeting the Jewish community organisations present made the following points:

• Jews (and others) throughout the country reacted to this cartoon with a visceral disgust that is unprecedented in recent years. This was due to the gratuitous and offensive nature of the image, made worse by its use of blood and its being published by Britain's leading Sunday newspaper on Holocaust Memorial Day.
• Blood has a long and ugly tradition within the history of antisemitism, premised upon the notorious medieval Blood Libel, with Jews being alleged to steal the blood of others for religious purposes. The use of blood, including on occasion the actual Blood Libel, persists in extreme Arab and Iranian anti-Israel propaganda. It is a profoundly disturbing example of the adaptation of antisemitism for modern day usage.
• These historical and contemporary contexts have racist impacts upon victims and proponents alike. This is why so many Jews were wounded by the cartoon, regardless of the initial motivations of Gerald Scarfe and the Sunday Times.

In response Martin Ivens said: "I'm grateful so many community leaders could come together at such short notice. You will know that the Sunday Times abhors antisemitism and would never set out to cause offence to the Jewish people – or any other ethnic or religious group. That was not the intention last Sunday. Everyone knows that Gerald Scarfe is consistently brutal and bloody in his depictions, but last weekend – by his own admission – he crossed a line. The timing – on Holocaust Memorial Day – was inexcusable. The associations on this occasion were grotesque and on behalf of the paper I'd like to apologise unreservedly for the offence we clearly caused. This was a terrible mistake."

Mick Davis, chair of the Jewish Leadership Council, said: "We have voiced our concern in response to the strength of the feeling from all sections of the Jewish community. I welcome the genuine apology from the Sunday Times. I appreciate the urgency and respect with which the Sunday Times have treated Jewish communal concerns and now look forward to constructively moving on from this affair."

  UPDATE: If you wish to express your appreciation to the Sunday Times, you can email them at: feedback@thetimes.co.uk

FURTHER UPDATE: The cartoonist, Gerald Scarfe, issued his own apology:

First of all I am not, and never have been, anti-Semitic. The Sunday Times has given me the freedom of speech over the last 46 years to criticise world leaders for what I see as their wrong-doings. This drawing was a criticism of Netanyahu, and not of the Jewish people: there was no slight whatsoever intended against them. I was, however, stupidly completely unaware that it would be printed on Holocaust Day, and I apologise for the very unfortunate timing.

The WTC Dust: Science and Replication

A few years ago a team of scientists studied the red/gray chips in dust samples of the World Trade Center buildings and came to the conclusion that they were the remains of an active thermitic material, which could have been used as explosives. Since then their claim has been disputed. But no one has tried to replicate their results. Science isn't just about trying to get peer-reviewed papers published. That's only part of the story. Once results have been published, it is then the job of other scientists to try to replicate the results, by doing the same experiments, though perhaps under more controlled conditions. NIST, for example, has dust samples of their own. They could conduct the same experiments and see what they get.

Meanwhile, Mark Basile, a chemical engineer and signer of the petition that requests a new, independent investigation into the events of 9/11, along with over 1,750 architects and engineers, is trying to raise funds to conduct a blind study of the dust samples. The fundraising is going slow. It hasn't been advertised in the two major 9/11 truther websites, which makes one wonder why. Is it distrust of Basile? Of the lab that he would eventually select? A fear that authorities would discover which lab it was and infiltrate, bribe, or threaten it to get negative results? That would be my fear. But whatever the reason, so far no one is trying to replicate the results of the original study. And so science (at least regarding the dust samples) remains at a stand still.

Anti-Semitic Cartoon in The Times

HT: Jerry Coyne.

  Honest Reporting has posted an article on what I consider to be a shocking anti-Semitic cartoon that appeared in the Sunday Times. I wrote a letter to the Times demanding an apology and ask that my readers do so also. One may disagree with and object to Israel's policies regarding the West Bank and the Palestinians without stooping to printing such graphic distortions.

  UPDATE: My friend who disagrees with me and thinks the cartoon is not anti-Semitic, has sent me a link to an article in Haaretz, a daily Israeli newspaper, that supports his argument: Four Reasons Why UK Cartoon of Netanyahu Isn't Anti-Semitic in Any Way

FURTHER UPDATE: And this cartoon by the same artist would suggest that he dislikes both Hammas and Israel's leaders.

  My Response to the Essay: What I think is the defining issue is brought up in the second point of the essay:

  2. It does not use Holocaust imagery: It has become generally accepted - justifiably I think - that comparing Israel's leaders and policies to those of the Third Reich is borderline, if not full-on anti-Semitism. Not only because there is no comparable genocide in human history, but because choosing it to describe the actions of the Jewish state is a nasty slur identifying Israelis as the successors of the Holocaust's victims turned into perpetrators of a second Holocaust. But there is nothing in Scarfe's cartoon that can put the Holocaust in mind.

What? A political leader building a wall with the bodies, heads, and blood of innocent civilians doesn't remind one of anything to do with the Holocaust? And the implication that by killing these people the leader is continuing his policy of peace? His final solution? Is the author serious? The very notion of de-humanizing that is built into such an image can do no other but remind us of comparable crimes against humanity, such as the Holocaust. If the author cannot admit that to himself, shouldn't we just assume that he is in denial? Certainly the actions of the villain in the cartoon are a testament to all that the Holocaust stands for. Therefore, using the author's own admission that comparing Netanyahu's actions to the Third Reich is "borderline, if not full-on anti-Semitism," we should conclude that the cartoon is borderline, if not full-on anti-Semitic.

Further thoughts: If the cartoonist had tried to maintain some semblance of even handedness, as he did in the Hamas-Netanyahu cartoon, where the actions of both Israeli and Palestinian leadership resulted in a blood-soaked wall, then I think the cartoon would have avoided anti-Semitic overtones. But the cartoonist made no such attempt. The blood of the Paltestinians is the result of a purposeful, systematic endeavor by Israel's (or at least, Netanyahu's) policies.

Conception to Birth - Visualized

Randal Rauser has posted a video worth watching.  Alexander Tsiaras:  Conception to Birth -Visualized:

Could Explosives Have Been Planted Unnoticed in the WTC Buildings?

911Blogger.com posted an interesting article on the question of whether explosives could have been planted in the WTC buildings without anyone noticing.  The video was the most interesting part:

And for more detail:

Someone in the second video points out that if the New York newspapers hadn't been on strike, then they would have reported on it. Yes, perhaps if they had known about it. But there was local and national television that wasn't on strike at the time. Why didn't they say anything about it?

Anti-Zionism, Anti-Jewishness, Liberalism and 9/11 Truth

Jerry Coyne posted a very good article on how anti-Jewish and anti-Israel sentiments are engendered among Muslim Arabs, but that somehow this is all too easily shrugged off by liberals (a group with which both Jerry and I identify). Since I'm also a 9/11 Truther, I have an added burden, since all too many 9/11 Truthers are quick to blame the events of 9/11 on the Mossad, the intelligence agency of Israel. There's virtually no evidence that they were involved. For them to be involved would have been a very unwise, risky endeavor. Had they been discovered, it would have spelled disaster for Israel.   The only non-risky way to be involved was with the cooperation of the U.S. military and intelligence community.  But if the U.S. military and intelligence community wanted to accomplish the events of 9/11, then they certainly didn't need the help of the Mossad to do it.  I judge it very unlikely, then, that the Mossad was involved.  

Were There Sounds of Explosions at WTC7?

A common objection to the theory that controlled demolitions were used to bring down WTC7 is that there were no sounds of explosions.  David Chandler produced what I think is a rather informative video in answer to this objection:

HT: Debunking the Debunkers

UPDATE:  This video is probably even better: