Tag Archives: News Media

Pope Francis Didn’t Mean That Thing About Atheists

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There was a story in the news a few days ago suggesting that Pope Francis is o.k. with atheists, so long as they’re good people. Some interpreted the Pope’s statement as meaning that atheists can even go to heaven if they’re sufficiently upstanding, which sounds like the idea that “good works” are good enough. An article from the Religion News Service said that the Pope’s remarks “may prompt a theological debate about the nature of salvation”.

Here’s what the Pope actually said:

“The Lord has redeemed all of us, all of us, with the Blood of Christ: all of us, not just Catholics. Everyone! ‘Father, the atheists?’ Even the atheists. Everyone! And this Blood makes us children of God of the first class! We are created children in the likeness of God and the Blood of Christ has redeemed us all! And we all have a duty to do good. And this commandment for everyone to do good, I think, is a beautiful path towards peace. If we, each doing our own part, if we do good to others, if we meet there, doing good, and we go slowly, gently, little by little, we will make that culture of encounter: we need that so much. We must meet one another doing good. ‘But I don’t believe, Father, I am an atheist!’ But do good: we will meet one another there.”

Unfortunately for any of us atheists or agnostics making plans for the afterlife, the “there” where we can meet the Pope probably won’t be heaven.

A Vatican spokesman, and other commentators, have explained that, in the view of the Catholic Church, all humanity was redeemed by Jesus’s sacrifice, even the atheists. This means that it is possible for everyone to be saved. Nobody is automatically ruled out (for example, by being born Hindu or by having been an atheist). This is traditional church doctrine.

However, in order to get to heaven, you have to meet one of two requirements:

(1) Be a good Catholic; or

(2) Be a good person who never had the opportunity to be a good Catholic, like a Kalahari Bushman who never heard about the gospel.

Anybody who had the opportunity to be a good Catholic but decided not to bother is out of luck:

171. What is the meaning of the affirmation “Outside the Church there is no salvation”? This means that all salvation comes from Christ, the Head, through the Church which is his body. Hence they cannot be saved who, knowing the Church as founded by Christ and necessary for salvation, would refuse to enter her or remain in her. At the same time, thanks to Christ and to his Church, those who through no fault of their own do not know the Gospel of Christ and his Church but sincerely seek God and, moved by grace, try to do his will as it is known through the dictates of conscience can attain eternal salvation. (Compendium of the Catechism of the Catholic Church)

So even a full-fledged non-believer, somebody who has consciously rejected belief in God and the Catholic Church, has been redeemed, but he or she has to become a good Catholic in order to be saved. Meanwhile, the Pope, to his credit, believes that we can all work together, even us non-believers, to make the world a better place.

I’m glad that’s cleared up.

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One of the original news stories:

http://www.religionnews.com/2013/05/22/pope-francis-god-redeemed-everyone

What the Pope said:

http://en.radiovaticana.va/news/2013/05/22/pope_at_mass

The official explanation:

http://www.zenit.org/en/articles/explanatory-note-on-the-meaning-of-salvation-may-22

Understanding the I.R.S. “Scandal”

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Journalists without a political ax to grind have been trying to explain what actually happened at the Cincinnati I.R.S. office. After reading some of these articles and looking at the official report issued by the Treasury Department’s Inspector General (see the links below), it’s reasonable to conclude that the so-called “scandal” amounts to some relatively over-worked, relatively low-level bureaucrats (aka accountants) trying to do their job (what Congress told them to do) but not quite following the rules (which are hard to understand).

Every application to be considered a tax-exempt “social welfare” organization under Federal tax code section 501(c)(4) is reviewed by the I.R.S. There are a few thousand such applications every year. One of the benefits of being granted this tax-exempt status is that an organization’s donors don’t need to be made public.

Some of these applications receive extra attention, often because they are suspected of being political groups masquerading as social welfare groups. A 501(c)(4) organization is allowed to engage in more political activity than a 501(c)(3) group like the Red Cross, but isn’t supposed to be “primarily engaged” in political activity (note the vagueness of the phrase “primarily engaged”).

In trying to figure out which 501(c)(4) applications needed extra attention, I.R.S. employees in Cincinnati devised some criteria to “be on the lookout for” (i.e. to help determine whether the group would be “primarily engaged” in politics or not).

Since the number of applications was steadily increasing, and there were lots of applications coming from groups associating themselves with the Tea Party and Glenn Beck, the criteria included references to “Tea Party”, “Patriots” and “9/12 Project” (a group created by Beck). The criteria for further review also included references to government spending, debt and taxes; educating the public by advocacy or lobbying to “make America a better place to live”; and statements “criticizing how the country is being run”.

So the immediate question is whether using these criteria would tend to identify groups whose main purpose was “political” rather than “social welfare”. Common sense suggests that the answer is “Yes”.

Roughly 1/3 of the applications that received extra attention included the terms “Tea Party”, “Patriots” or “9/12 Project”. The extra reviews took a long time and sometimes featured burdensome questions from the I.R.S., but the principal issue, according to the Inspector General’s report, was that:

“The IRS used inappropriate criteria that identified for review Tea Party and other organizations applying for tax-exempt status based upon their names or policy positions instead of indications of potential political campaign intervention.”

One might argue that referring to yourself as a Tea Party or Project 9/12 group or claiming that your main purpose is to fight government spending is a good indication that you might be spending most of your time trying to affect political campaigns, especially in an election year. But, according to the Inspector General’s report, this wasn’t the correct way to identify such groups.

I’m not sure how the I.R.S. accountants are supposed to  predict which 501(c)(4) groups will primarily engage in improper political activity. At any rate, all of the applications getting this questionable special attention were ultimately approved or are still being evaluated.

This is the “scandal” that some foolish and/or unscrupulous politicians and journalists are making such a big deal about. The especially noxious Peggy Noonan recently claimed that this, along with some right-wing contributors being audited, is the biggest scandal since Watergate (the I.R.S. audits between 1 and 2 million individual tax returns every year, so it isn’t surprising that some of the taxpayers involved are right-wing contributors).

What should be a scandal receiving Congressional and media attention is that several 501(c)(4) groups, such as Karl Rove’s American Crossroads, spend millions of dollars intervening in political campaigns, but (apparently because they can afford talented lawyers) don’t pay taxes and don’t have to say who their donors are. 

It’s politics as usual in the Greatest Country in the World.

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Those links I promised:

The differences between 501(c)(3), 501(c)(4) and political organizations:

http://www.mffh.org/mm/files/AFJ_Comparison-of-501C3S-501C4S.pdf 

The Inspector General report:

http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2013/05/15/us/politics/15irs-inspector-report.html

What went on in Cincinnati:

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/19/us/politics/at-irs-unprepared-office-seemed-unclear-about-the-rules.html?hp

Some context and commentary from the Columbia Journalism Review:

http://www.cjr.org/united_states_project/the_other_irs_scandal.php?page=all

It’s Nice When the World Makes Sense

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Even if the underlying facts aren’t so great at all.

Case 1: Paul Krugman ties together two recent stories: how the economic evidence for cutting government spending during a recession is non-existent, and how cutting spending on programs like Medicare and Social Security is the preferred strategy of the rich. It probably won’t make any difference that the scientific support for government austerity during an economic downturn has been demolished, since facts don’t necessarily trump ideology. For the most part, the political class is subservient to the upper class. Marx, who helped generate a vast number of ideologists himself, wasn’t wrong about everything.

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/26/opinion/krugman-the-one-percents-solution.html?ref=paulkrugman

Krugman cites the study I wrote about under the title “What the 1% Want from Washington”:

https://whereofonecanspeak.com/2013/04/07/what-the-1-want-from-washington/

Case 2:  According to the New York Times, the Boston police commissioner admitted this week that Dzhokhar Tsarnaev (joh-KHAHR’ tsahr-NEYE’-ehv) and the boat in which he hid were both in the 20-block search perimeter all along. It’s not clear why Tsarnaev wasn’t found during the manhunt, but it wasn’t because the boat was 1 block outside the search perimeter, as the Watertown police chief claimed. (See the post below, which includes a transcript of the police discussing where to search.)

In this case, it didn’t make sense that a small army of police failed to search an area 2 or 3 blocks from where the guy dumped his getaway car. What didn’t make any sense now makes some sense. People make mistakes and then make excuses. No shock there. 

Stop Me Before I Write About the Boston Manhunt Again!

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(See postscript below — The Boston police commissioner has admitted that Tsarnaev was in the perimeter all along. That’s good enough for me. I can go back to more productive activities, like sleeping and mowing the lawn.)

Ok, I’m going to stop writing about this until someone in the media or someone writing a book explains exactly where the police searched for Dzhokhar Tsarnaev after the gun battle in Watertown. Then I can write that someone has finally offered a better explanation of why they didn’t find him during the manhunt.

But first —

I still think the guy was inside the famous 20-block perimeter all the time (not that it matters, of course, in the grand scheme of things).

Here is a map of Watertown that shows the streets discussed in this post. Point A is near where Tsarnaev abandoned his getaway car. Point B is where he was captured:

The NY Times has published a long article that begins with the murder of the M.I.T. officer and concludes with the capture at 67 Franklin Street. Here’s what they say about the search in the “20-block perimeter”:

“I yelled to the cops, ‘Watch out!’ ” Mr. Doucette said in an interview. But the car hit the wounded brother, he said, and “his body was tumbling underneath.”

As Friday dawned, state officials urged people in the Boston area to stay behind locked doors, and all transit service was shut down — paralyzing the metropolitan area as officials searched for Dzhokhar Tsarnaev. That evening they lifted the order, fearing he had escaped.

That’s not terribly informative (maybe the editors cut something), but next to the article, the Times has provided excerpts picked up by police scanners. One selection, labeled “Hunting for the Suspects” is 1 minute and 59 seconds long:

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/25/us/officers-killing-spurred-pursuit-in-boston-attack.html?pagewanted=1&hp

These excerpts confirm that the abandoned getaway car (the hijacked SUV) was found at the corner of Lincoln and Spruce. (Lincoln and Spruce is between points A and B on the map above.)

An officer then refers to someone (possibly himself) being on foot near Dexter and Laurel, where the gun battle occurred earlier that night.

Next, someone advises officers not to investigate around Lincoln Street (in the vicinity of the SUV) without a partner.

Then someone relays an order to set up a perimeter between Mount Auburn and Arsenal Streets, an area that includes 67 Franklin Street (where Tsarnaev was captured) and the SUV, but also extends eastward past Dexter and Laurel (scene of the gun battle) all the way to Arlington Street (at the eastern edge of the map above).

A senior officer then states that he is at 98 Spruce Street, a few houses south of the abandoned SUV. He says that the search perimeter needs to be expanded in 4 directions, centered around 98 Spruce. He wants a perimeter in a 3-block radius from that location (this is a relatively small area within the larger Mount Auburn-Arsenal-Arlington perimeter).

Depending on how you count the blocks, which aren’t consistently shaped, it looks as if a 3-block radius from 98 Spruce would include 67 Franklin Street at its western edge.

This is a map showing the distance between 98 Spruce and 67 Franklin (according to Google, it’s 0.3 miles and a 6-minute walk — less if you cut through people’s backyards).

The same officer then says the perimeter should be “at least 2-blocks deep for now”, which might leave 67 Franklin out of the immediate search, “and then expand it”, presumably putting 67 Franklin back in.

Another officer relays an order to maintain the perimeter at the Mount Auburn and Arsenal boundaries, but to move the boundary on the east side to School Street (which runs parallel to Arlington). This eliminates the area around the gun battle, which happened east of School Street, and tightens the perimeter around the the SUV and Franklin Street.

This officer then goes on to say “2 blocks away [from 98 Spruce] is also Walnut Street, which runs from School to Mount Auburn”. This indicates that the 2-block radius mentioned above (which was supposed to be expanded to 3-blocks later on) was bounded by Walnut Street and did not include Franklin Street.

The senior officer who spoke before then says “O.k. Once we have officers complete that, expand it 2 more blocks [i.e. from 2 to 4] from those areas [meaning 4 blocks from 98 Spruce]… We have plenty of police officers here. Let’s start utilizing them. From 98 Spruce, 2 blocks and then 4 blocks”.

That’s where the audio ends. A 4-block perimeter centered on 98 Spruce Street would have included 67 Franklin Street, which is just 1 block from Walnut Street, and 3 blocks from 98 Spruce.

Unfortunately, there aren’t any timestamps on this recording, so it’s not clear when all this happened. In one press conference, the Watertown police chief said that blood was found at a house after the SUV was abandoned (maybe this was 98 Spruce Street). He also says that Tsarnaev didn’t go directly to 67 Franklin, suggesting that, at some point, the suspect may have crossed one of the smaller perimeters on foot without being detected.

http://abcnews.go.com/US/boston-bomb-suspect-captured-alive-backyard-boat/story?id=18994511#.UXiGx7XCaSp

So it still isn’t clear whether the police searched around 67 Franklin, before or after Tsarnaev found his way there.

The police chief  has explained that Tsarnaev wasn’t found earlier because he was hiding 1 block outside the search perimeter. If that’s true, the search never went beyond Walnut Street, 2 blocks from 98 Spruce.

Yet there was an order to search 4 blocks away from that address.  67 Franklin is clearly within that 4-block radius.

And, of course, Franklin Street is well-within the larger Mount Auburn-Arsenal-School Street perimeter. That larger perimeter roughly corresponds to a 20-block area of Watertown, and it’s been stated many times that the search in Watertown involved 20 square blocks.

POSTSCRIPT —

I’m surprised and embarrassed (and pleased) to see that this information is on the last page of the Times article cited above:

“Police officials initially said the boat was in the backyard of a house just outside the perimeter of the area where investigators had conducted door-to-door searches all day. But Commissioner Davis, of the Boston police, said this week that the boat had been inside the perimeter.

‘It was an area that should have been checked,’ he said. ‘We are not sure how long he was in the boat. There was a pool of blood near where the car was dumped about four or five blocks away from the boat.’

I confess that I didn’t read the last page of the article, since the reporters skipped over the manhunt so quickly, I assumed they didn’t have anything more to say on the matter.

It’s also kind of interesting that the Times article may have been the first place this news was printed. A Google search just showed that the quote from the police commissioner has only been printed on 4 other sites, all in the past 14 hours.

This, therefore, is another change that should be added to this article from Salon:

http://www.salon.com/2013/04/25/the_changing_facts_in_the_boston_investigation/

Was Suspect #2 Outside the Search Perimeter or Not?

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(This is the 3rd of 4 long posts I’ve written on this subject. The last one is here:  https://whereofonecanspeak.com/2013/04/25/stop-me-before-i-write-about-the-boston-manhunt-again/

Henceforth, I — your humble blogger — plan to return to more mundane subjects, like politics, philosophy, rock music and buying hot dogs.)

The Associated Press released a long article on April 21 called “Five Days of Fear: What Happened in Boston”. It’s been published by a number of newspapers and websites.

Here’s what the article has to say about the Watertown gun battle and manhunt (I’ve edited out some extraneous text):

“It was past 11 p.m. now, and as the Mercedes sped west into Watertown, one of (Chief) Deveau’s officers spotted it and gave chase, realizing too late he was alone against the brothers driving two separate cars. When both vehicles came to a halt, Deveau said, the men stepped out and opened fire. Three more officers arrived, then two who were off-duty, fending off a barrage. When a Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority officer, Richard Donohue, pulled up behind them, a bullet to the groin severed an artery and he went down.

“We’re in a gunfight, a serious gunfight,” Deveau said. “Rounds are going and then all of the sudden they see something being thrown at them and there’s a huge explosion.

As the firefight continued, Tamerlan Tsarnaev moved closer and closer to the officers, until less than 10 feet separated them, continuing to shoot even as he was hit by police gunfire, until finally he ran out of ammunition and officers tackled him, Deveau said. But as they struggled to cuff the older brother, he said, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev jumped back in the second vehicle.

“All of the sudden somebody yelled ‘Get out of the way!’ and they (the 6 or 7 officers) look up and here comes the black SUV that’s been hijacked right at them. They dove out of the way at the last second and he ran over his brother, dragged him down the street and then fled,” he said.

But after all the gunfire, the younger Tsarnaev had vanished. Officers, their guns drawn, moved through the neighborhood of wood-frame homes and cordoned off the area as daylight approached.

At 8:30 a.m., Jonathan Peck heard helicopters circling above his house (at 128) Cypress Street and looked outside to see about 50 armed men. “It seemed like Special Forces teams were searching every nook and cranny of my yard,” he said.

Unable to find Tsarnaev, authorities announced they were shutting down not just Watertown, but all of Boston and many of its suburbs, affecting more than 1 million people.

But as the hours went by, and the house-to-house search continued, investigators found no sign of their quarry. Finally, at about 6:30 p.m., they announced the shutdown had been lifted.”

http://bigstory.ap.org/article/five-days-fear-what-happened-boston

There is no mention of where Dzhokhar Tsarnaev (suspect #2) drove the SUV (although it’s been reported that he drove it only 6 or 7/10ths of a mile down Laurel St. as it turns into Spruce St. and then walked away on foot).

There is no indication that any of the officers used their own cars to pursue the SUV as Tsarnaev drove away.

“Officers … moved through the neighborhood … and cordoned off the area as daylight approached.” It’s not clear from this whether “as daylight approached” applies to the officers moving through neighborhood or merely to officers cordoning off the area, but the sun rose at 5:47 a.m., some 5 hours after the gun battle.

A resident says that he heard helicopters overhead and saw armed officers searching around his house at 8:30 a.m., about 3 hours after the sun rose.

The person quoted in the article lives at 138 Cypress Street (according to the White Pages). That is very near the site of the gun battle (according to some reports). If that address was in the 20-block search perimeter, the police were searching east of School Street, which conflicts with other reports claiming that the search area was to the west of School Street (closer to where the SUV was abandoned). 

In an interview transcribed by ABC News, Chief Deveau is quoted as follows:

“We know he didn’t go straight to the boat. We found blood in the car he abandoned and we found blood in a house inside the perimeter. We had no information that he had gotten outside the perimeter, but it was very chaotic this morning. We had a police officer who was shot and bleeding … We had a perimeter that we thought was solid and we did that but we were about one block away.”

http://abcnews.go.com/US/boston-bomb-suspect-captured-alive-backyard-boat/story?id=18994511#.UXiGx7XCaSp

I can’t tell from this whether Deveau is referring to blood in the SUV that was abandoned west of School Street (near where Tsarnaev was captured), or the Honda that Tsarnaev abandoned east of School Street during the gun battle. Or where or when blood was found in a house within the perimeter.

The only police officer who was shot and bleeding was injured during the gun battle that occurred before midnight. Does this mean that the police had set up a perimeter some time after midnight and not when dawn was approaching, as the Associated Press story indicates? And that Tsarnaev, bleeding, entered a house somewhere near the abandoned SUV, and then left the house and walked west, avoiding detection as he crossed the perimeter, eventually finding the boat on Franklin Street?

All I can conclude from all this is that the police didn’t pursue Tsarnaev when he drove away from the gun battle. Then they set up a perimeter at some point between midnight and dawn, which may have included the site of the gun battle, but supposedly didn’t include 67 Franklin Street, 2/10ths of a mile west of the SUV, where Tsarnaev was eventually captured.  

It’s not clear whether they found blood in a house before or after they set up their 20-block search perimeter. Or whether Tsarnaev walked to Franklin Street before or after they set up the search perimeter. Or where exactly the search perimeter was.

In the map below, point A is where a resident says he saw police searching his yard, point B is where the gun battle occurred the night before, point C is where Tsarnaev dumped the SUV after the gun battle, and point D is where he was captured. Why the police would be doing a door-to-door search where there was a gun battle instead of including more ground near the abandoned SUV is still a mystery, if that’s what they actually did.

By the way, the Associated Press is now reporting that police recovered only one handgun at the scene of the gun battle (during which police claimed 250 shots were fired) and that Tsarnaev was not armed when he was captured (which means he didn’t shoot at anyone from the boat, or try to kill himself in the boat, as suggested in some reports).

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/04/24/boston-bombing-suspect-unarmed_n_3150723.html

“War is an area of uncertainty; three quarters of the things on which all action in War is based are lying in a fog of uncertainty to a greater or lesser extent.” — Carl von Clausewitz

Plus, people make stuff up.