The Arts & Leisure section of today's New York Times carries an article by the newspaper's architecture critic that quotes Mark Gottdiener on the topic of shopping malls. Mr. Gottdiener says, "The purpose of a mall is to sell consumer goods. The function of mall design, therefore, is to disguise the exchange relation between producer and consumer, which is always more to the former's benefit in capitalist society, and to present cognitively an integrated facade which facilitates this instrumental purpose by the stimulation of consumer fantasies."

The Times architecture critic writes, "Gottdiener conducts his exposure though a neo-Marxian lens. His approach is justified by the extreme deception practiced by mall designers in contriving to make private spaces look like public ones. The interior of a mall may resemble a small town Main Street, sometimes, or, in the case of the Mall of America, the ceremonial axis of a grand capital city planned on neo-classical lines. But the interior is enclosed within walls that discourage public access. Those without cars, for example, will find their right of entry curtailed."

How about this claim that in capitalist society "the exchange relation between producer and consumer" is always more to the producer's benefit? The Times quotes it approvingly, describing it as "neo-Marxian" and "justified." It doesn't seem justified to Smartertimes.com. In fact, free markets and capitalism are based on the idea that the transaction between producer and consumer takes place, in general, at the price point where the benefits to each are equal. To make this a little less abstract, consider a customer going into a store and spending $50 on a sweater. Gottdiener's claim, apparently endorsed by the Times, is that the $50 benefits the store more than the sweater benefits the customer. If this is the case, why would the customer, operating freely, spend the money on the sweater? The Times-Gottdiener claim, as typical of Marxist claims, "neo" or otherwise, is essentially elitist: that the masses are the victims of "deception," that they have been gulled by a "disguise." Smartertimes.com thinks Americans, and most humans, for that matter, are shrewder than that. In fact, if the sweater were priced at $1,000, no amount of disguising and deception would allow it to be sold in large numbers. Consumers would see that high price as representing an unreasonably large benefit to the producer compared to the benefit to them. Or, to put it simply, they'd say the sweater is too expensive. Similarly, the producer isn't going to sell the $50 sweater for 25 cents. The benefit to the consumer would be unreasonably large compared to the benefit to the producer. Or, to put it simply, the sweater would be priced too low. This all probably seems pretty basic to anyone who has run a lemonade stand or gone shopping in mall, but the Times doesn't seem to get it.

The fact that producers sometimes make a profit is one possible source for the Times claim that the exchange relation between producer and consumer is always more to the producer's benefit. But the profit is the payment to those who put capital -- including human capital -- at risk by investing in the business. Furthermore, contrary to the implication of the Times, in America, the line between producers and consumers is highly permeable. The "consumer" buying the sweater at the mall may be purchasing it with money he earned as a "producer" -- the profits from his lemonade stand. Or he may be a union worker whose union pension fund may own stock in the store that sold the sweater.

The line about malls being "enclosed within walls that discourage public access" is more nonsense. Would the Times architecture critic propose that computers and watches and jewelry be sold in stores without walls? How would the merchandise be protected from theft or from damage by water and snow? How would the shoppers be kept comfortable in the heat of summer or the snow of winter? And if the walls discourage public access, why do the owners of the stores -- who are presumably eager for traffic from shoppers -- build them?

The claim that "those without cars" will find their access to malls curtailed is similarly absurd. The Pentagon City Mall in Virginia has a subway stop built right into it. The Copley Place Mall in Boston is easily accessible by subway. The Mall of America in Minnesota, the only mall that the Times critic cites by name as an example, is a popular stop on cross-country bus tours. The editor of Smartertimes.com has been car-less since moving to New York several years ago and has never once had his mall access curtailed.

The great irony here, of course, is that the bills for printing this silliness in the Times, and the salaries of the editors and writers that produce it, are being paid largely by revenue derived from advertisements in the New York Times for department stores. Many of those stores are located in shopping malls. The Times this morning is telling the customers of those stores that the store owners and mall developers are engaged in an "extreme deception," an attempt to "disguise" the fact that every time a consumer buys something in one of those stores, the consumer is getting the worse end of the deal. Why these store owners do not take their business to a newspaper that supports the capitalist system under which they have prospered, instead of propping up a newspaper that attacks that system, is a mystery.

A front-page article in today's New York Times reports, "This afternoon, in the shade cast by a building, six Palestinian soldiers drank cups of sweet Arabic coffee, a half hour after trading shots with Israeli tanks."

No explanation by the Times of what army these "soldiers" serve in, or whose command they are under.

That is a significant point, because the agreements under which the PLO operates in Hebron and elsewhere in the West bank are explicit in forbidding soldiers from any country but Israel to operate in this area. The May 4, 1994, Gaza-Jericho Agreement between Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization provides in Article IX, section 2, that "Except for the Palestinian Police referred to in this Article and the Israeli military forces, no other armed forces shall be established or operate in the Gaza Strip or the Jericho Area." The January 17, 1997, Hebron redeployment protocol incorporated by mention the September 28, 1995, interim agreement ("Oslo II"), which also said, in Article XIV, "Except for the Palestinian Police and the Israeli military forces, no other armed forces shall be established or operate in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip."

If in fact these Palestinian soldiers were the "police" referred to in the agreements between the PLO and Israel, then they are violating the agreements by "trading shots with Israeli tanks." That's not what the "police" created by those agreements were supposed to do.

Anyway, it's nice to see the Times calling these Palestinian soldiers what they in fact are, and reporting that they are firing on Israelis. But it would also be nice to see the newspaper probe a bit deeper into the operations of these "Palestinian soldiers." The Times tends to dwell much more on the rock-throwing Arab children then on the gun-toting Arab soldiers.

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Today's New York Times carries an editorial that runs under the headline "Diplomatic Balance in the Mideast." The editorial calls for "a balanced approach," an "evenhanded American effort" to mediate between Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization. This is just ridiculous. Would the Times call on Britain to adopt a "balanced," "evenhanded" approach between the United States and Osama Bin Laden? Israel is a country that shares America's values of freedom and democracy. It was a steady friend to America in the Cold War and the Gulf War. The PLO is a terrorist organization that runs the West Bank and Gaza as a corrupt dictatorship. It sided against America in the Cold War and the Gulf War. For America to approach the Israeli-Arab conflict in a "balanced," "evenhanded" manner would be a betrayal of America's friendship with Israel.

It's bad enough that the Times editorializes to this effect. But the views spill over into the news coverage, as well. The Times' support for balance and evenhandedness, it seems extends to the Bush administration's diplomacy but not to the newspaper's own news operations. The Times carries a dispatch from Tel Aviv in today's paper that reports, "Now that the talks are under way, the predicament facing Mr. Sharon is that if he pronounces the cease-fire dead and blocks further talks he will risk the appearance of undermining Mr. Bush's war on terrorism." This is twisted. If the Israeli Prime Minister refuses to negotiate further with the terrorists, he "risks the appearance of undermining Mr. Bush's war on terrorism"? If Mr. Bush's war on terrorism consists of pressuring Israel's democratically elected government to negotiate further with the terrorists, then appearing to undermine it is not a "risk" but a benefit. This seems to Smartertimes.com like a predicament facing Mr. Bush, not one facing Mr. Sharon. The word "appearance" is particularly rich. Mr. Sharon is being told to worry about how he will appear to the Times, which has a twisted view of the situation.

Another dispatch in today's Times runs under the headline, "U.S. Jews Split on Washington's Shift on Palestinian State." That article claims "a significant split has emerged among American Jewish organizations over the Bush administration's consideration of a diplomatic initiative that would include United States support for the creation of a Palestinian state." It's an incredibly one-sided dispatch. The Times quotes extensively from a letter from left-wing factions in the American Jewish community and from interviews with longtime extremist "peace" activists. But when it comes time to represent the views of the mainstream and center-right wing of the community, the Times relies only on an old "statement" and an old quote from "a news report." It is as if the Times reporter doesn't deign personally to speak with anyone who is not a member of the left wing. Those who oppose the timing of the announcement of the Bush administration's initiative, or those who oppose the initiative itself, aren't given a chance in the Times article to respond to the leftists' letter.

Trade Caricature: An article on page B8 of today's New York Times runs under the headline "Gephardt Says He Will Resist Bush on Trade." The article reports that labor unions "fear that expanded trade would cost jobs in this country, particularly in manufacturing, where unions are strong." That's a caricature of the unions' position on trade. In fact most labor union leaders are sophisticated enough to realize that expanded trade can actually mean gains in jobs in this country -- even manufacturing jobs, as America exports goods. The unions say their objection is not to the expansion of trade in principle but to the expansion of trade with unfree countries where workers don't have the same right to organize unions and bargain collectively that they do in America. The Times could argue that the union claims about worker rights abroad are just a smokescreen for protectionist anti-trade sentiment. But the sentence in today's article doesn't do justice to position articulated by the unions.

Mark Green and Al Sharpton: An article in the metro section of today's New York Times reports, "All of this explains why Mr. Green has declined the advice of supporters who have urged him to attack Mr. Sharpton." Today's New York Post has a headline, "Mark Roughs Up Rev. Al." Sometimes it really seems like these newspapers are writing about two different cities.

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A front-page "news analysis" in today's New York Times refers to "Richard Perle, a former State Department official." Mr. Perle was a longtime aide to Sen. Henry "Scoop" Jackson on committee staff in the U.S. Senate, and he was, from 1981 to 1987, assistant secretary of defense for international security policy. But he's not particularly well known for serving at the State Department, if indeed he ever did so. In any event, Mr. Perle's past position is less relevant for Times readers than his current one -- he is chairman of the Defense Policy Board at the Department of Defense. Looks like the "news analysis" could have used some analysis before it was printed.

Anti-Israeli: The New York Times does it again today, defining Hezbollah as an "anti-Israeli organization," and an "anti-Israel group." The Times says of Hamas and Hezbollah that "For more than a decade the United States has defined them as the two main anti-Israeli terrorist groups and has branded Iran and Syria as state sponsors of terrors because of their support for the groups." In fact, the State Department's annual report on Patterns of Global Terrorism makes clear that the support of terrorism by Iran and Syria extends far beyond the assistance they provide to Hamas and Hezbollah. And, as Smartertimes has been saying over and over again, Hezbollah is not only an anti-Israel group. It has the blood of Americans on its hands. The State Department's own report says Hezbollah is "known or suspected to have been involved in numerous anti-US terrorist attacks, including the suicide truck bombing of the US Embassy and US Marine barracks in Beirut in October 1983 and the US Embassy annex in Beirut in September 1984. Elements of the group were responsible for the kidnapping and detention of US and other Western hostages in Lebanon." It's just maddening that the Times continues studiously to avoid mentioning Hezbollah's role in terrorism that targets America as well as Israel.

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Under the headline, "Muslim Leader Presses Agenda of Understanding," the New York Times today publishes a fawning profile of Agha Saeed, the "unflappable national chairman of the American Muslim Alliance," which the Times calls "the main organization devoted to the political assimilation of the nation's seven million Arab-Americans."

The Times reports on the Muslim alliance's national conference scheduled for San Jose, Calif., on Oct. 13, "where Dr. Saeed has amended the agenda to include a new topic in the spirit of one of his favorite poets, Walt Whitman -- 'Dream on, America: Dignity in the face of adversity.'"

Just what sort of "dignity" and "understanding" is the "unflappable," Walt Whitman-reading Mr. Saeed preaching?

Well, his organization, the American Muslim Alliance, was a sponsor of an infamous May 24, 1998, program at Brooklyn College at which a militant Egyptian cleric, Wagdi Ghuniem, led an audience of 500 in the chant, "No to the Jews, descendants of the apes.'"

As Steven Emerson has reported on OpinionJournal.com, at the 1997 annual convention of the American Muslim Alliance, the organization distributed an article by S.A. Ahsani, head of the AMA's Texas chapter, denying the existence of "Auschwitz, Birkenau and Majdanek."

The New York Times itself reported on October 27, 2000, that Hillary Clinton's Senate campaign returned $50,000 in contributions raised by the American Muslim Alliance because of what Mrs. Clinton called "offensive and outrageous" statements by members of the American Muslim Alliance, including support expressed by Mr. Saeed for the right of Palestinians to use "armed resistance" against the Israelis.

The American Muslim's Alliance's own Web site quotes Mr. Saeed justifying "armed struggle" by the Palestinian Arabs against Israel. The December 1997 issue of the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, itself a rabidly anti-Israel publication, reports that Mr. Saeed "had his first hands-on involvement in U.S. politics in 1984, working in the campaign of Democratic presidential candidate Jesse Jackson. Dr. Saeed's U.S. political activism in turn led to an invitation from the Palestine National Council to visit occupied Palestine. 'The oppression I saw there traumatized me,' he says. 'It seemed to me to be far worse than anything my forbears had experienced in the subcontinent. That's where the idea of the American Muslim Alliance came from. I became convinced we needed a system of our own to fight a system of apartheid. But first of all we had to understand the American political system.'" In the late 1980s the Palestine National Council was an organizations of terrorists devoted to Israel's complete and violent destruction. And the quote about where the idea for the American Alliance came from sheds new light on the claim that it is "devoted to the political assimilation of the nation's seven million Arab-Americans." It might be more accurate to say it is devoted to "fight" -- to use Dr. Saeed's word -- the policies of Israel. (The "seven million," figure, by the way, is inflated. The 1990 census, the most recent for which results on this topic are available, put the number of Americans who reported some Arab ancestry at 1.4 million.)

As for the 2001 conference in San Jose, the scheduled speakers for the "Dream on, America: Dignity in the face of adversity" panel, according to the American Muslim Alliance Web site, include Maher Hathout. Mr. Hathout, speaking at the National Press Club on June 18, 1998, said, "Hezbollah is fighting for freedom...This is legitimate." As Smartertimes.com noted yesterday, according the U.S. State Department's Patterns of Global Terrorism report issued in April, 2001, Hezbollah is "known or suspected to have been involved in numerous anti-US terrorist attacks, including the suicide truck bombing of the US Embassy and US Marine barracks in Beirut in October 1983 and the US Embassy annex in Beirut in September 1984. Elements of the group were responsible for the kidnapping and detention of US and other Western hostages in Lebanon." According to the Los Angeles Times of August 22, 1998, Mr. Hathout responded to America's last attack on Osama Bin Laden's training camp in Afghanistan by saying, "Our country is committing an act of terrorism. What we did is illegal, immoral, unhuman, unacceptable, stupid and un-American."

It's just mind-boggling that the Times could run out a profile of the leader of this outfit under the headline "Muslim Leader Presses Agenda of Understanding." The Times reports without even a trace of skepticism on his "dignity in the face of adversity."

What's the "agenda of understanding"? Is it the Holocaust denial? The defense of Hezbollah as legitimate fighters for "freedom"? "No to the Jews, Descendants of the Apes"? "Armed struggle" against Israel? None of it rates even a mention in the Times's puff piece.

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A front-page news article in today's New York Times runs under the headline, "Before Attacks, U.S. Was Ready To Say It Backed Palestinian State."

The story has all the markings of wishful thinking by the Times's State Department sources. But if the news is indeed true, then the Times soft-pedals the significance of it. The third paragraph of the Times article reports, "Senior members of the Bush administration had been critical of former President Clinton's aggressive efforts to broker a Middle East settlement, saying the United States could not impose a peace that the parties did not want. But the plan Secretary Powell was preparing to present included proposals for a comprehensive settlement and an American role in carrying it out."

The phrase "senior members of the Bush administration" is laughable. It wasn't just "senior members" of the Bush administration that had been critical of that approach; it was the senior member, George W. Bush himself.

Here's what candidate George W. Bush said on May 22, 2000, to a conference of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee: "In recent times, Washington has tried to make Israel conform to its own plans and timetables; but this is not the path to peace."

Here's what candidate George W. Bush said in the third 2000 Gore-Bush Presidential Debate, on October 17, 2000: "The next leader needs to be patient. We can't put the Middle East peace process on our timetable. It's got to be on the timetable of the people that we're trying to bring to the peace table. We can't dictate the terms of peace."

Mr. Bush was so clear about this during the campaign, in fact, that the headline on the story could be "Powell Prepares to Undermine Bush" or "Powell Prepares to Break Bush Campaign Position." Instead of this kind of clarity, however, the Times serves up the vague language about "senior members of the Bush administration."

To get a sense of where the Times is coming from on this story, look at whose comments the newspaper includes. The article ends with remarks from Martin Indyk and Dennis Ross, two mainstays of the Oslo process. As Norman Podhoretz notes in this month's Commentary cover story, "Oslo: The Peacemongers Return," Mr. Indyk has maintained -- in Mr. Indyk's own words -- that "Just because the Middle East peace process failed doesn't mean it should be abandoned." The Times dutifully turns to Mr. Indyk and Mr. Ross for comments on Mr. Powell's plans, but it hardly ever turns to Mr. Podhoretz or other critics of negotiating with terrorists. If the newspaper had asked, maybe one of the Oslo critics would have said something like, "Why stop at carving from Israel and its capital a state for the Palestinian Arabs? Why not also reward the other terrorists, too, and give Osama Bin Laden a country carved from American territory with a capital in Washington?"

Iran: A dispatch in the international section of today's New York Times reports, "Iran has shown signs of softening its virulently anti-American stance in recent years." This "softening" no doubt includes the scene after Friday prayers in Teheran last week, when, as reported in the Telegraph, members of the congregation "marched to the Palestinian embassy, chanting 'Death to Israel, America and Britain,'" while squads of the Revolutionary Guard handed out toffees.

The New York Times article goes on to report, "American aides officially regard Iran, which has long backed anti-Israeli militant groups like Hezbollah, as one of the world's leading state sponsors of terrorism." What's with the "officially"? Is the Times trying to suggest that unofficially American aides regard Iran as something other than that? And what's with the stunningly euphemistic description of Hezbollah as an "anti-Israeli militant group." That it is, but, more relevantly, it is an anti-American terrorist group. According the U.S. State Department's Patterns of Global Terrorism report issued in April, 2001, Hezbollah is "known or suspected to have been involved in numerous anti-US terrorist attacks, including the suicide truck bombing of the US Embassy and US Marine barracks in Beirut in October 1983 and the US Embassy annex in Beirut in September 1984. Elements of the group were responsible for the kidnapping and detention of US and other Western hostages in Lebanon."

Thankful: New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman today writes, "How thankful we are today that we have a Washington, D.C., with its strong institutions -- FEMA, the F.A.A., the F.B.I. and armed forces." Well, unalloyed thankfulness isn't exactly the emotion that many Americans are feeling these days toward the FAA, which is supposed to make sure that airplanes and airports are secure, nor toward the FBI, which is a key aspect of the domestic terrorism prevention effort. After the terrorist attacks, there are a lot of people wondering whether those institutions were as "strong" as Mr. Friedman claims. This is not to doubt the strength of America as a nation nor to criticize the many dedicated public servants that staff its institutions.

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The four-column headline over the lead, front-page news article in today's New York Times says, "Bush Approves Covert Aid for Taliban Foes." The article begins, "President Bush has approved a secret effort to strengthen a diverse array of groups opposing the Taliban rulers of Afghanistan, administration officials said today."

This language brought a chuckle from the editor of Smartertimes.com as he picked up his paper this morning. If administration officials are telling the New York Times about the plan and the Times is reporting it on the top of the front page under a four-column headline, the aid is neither "secret" nor "covert," at least according to the dictionary definitions of those terms.

Granted, the very public debates of the 1980s over "covert" funding for the Afghan rebels and the Contras had already eroded the meaning of the word "covert." But the Times would have been more accurate this morning simply to note that the aid program has not been formally announced to the American public or at a public session of Congress. Calling it "secret" and "covert" when it is neither has a whiff of hype about it, at the expense of accuracy.

The same Times article this morning reports that America "has shrouded the effort in secrecy to avoid giving the impression that Washington alone is determining the future of Afghanistan." This sentence, too, seems laden with contradictions in the context of the rest of the story. How can the effort be "shrouded in secrecy" if administration officials are telling the New York Times about it? If the administration is indeed so eager to avoid giving the impression that it alone is determining the future of Afghanistan, then telling the New York Times about the "secret" plan and then explaining to the Times that the reason the plan is "secret" is that the administration wants to avoid looking like it is calling the shots in Afghanistan seems too clever by three-quarters.

For a reader trying to figure out what the Bush administration's policy is and what to think of it, the Times dispatch is less than helpful. One possibility is that the administration really was trying to run a secret, covert program but simply lacked the internal discipline to avoid talking to the press about it. The leak, in other words, was accidental and not calculated. Another possibility was that the leak was calculated and authorized, and that the aid program is not in fact intended to be "secret" and "covert" at all. The Times news article leaves this matter entirely opaque. It's really hard for a reader to tell if the Bush administration is just monstrously bad at keeping secrets in wartime, or if the Times is being used as a megaphone to announce an aid program that was never really intended to be secret or covert, but that the Bush administration is pretending it was trying to keep secret because of a misguided fear of anti-imperialist backlash.

The lead article in the Week in Review section of today's New York Times reports, "And the Sept. 11 attack opened opportunities for Mr. Bush, too. He and his advisers have long derided nation-building and the advancement of human rights abroad. Under President Clinton, those goals hurt relations with Russia, China and other less than democratic countries whose support the Bush administration now wants."

Leave aside "nation-building." The claim that Mr. Bush and his advisers have long derided "the advancement of human rights abroad" is unsubstantiated.

Here is Mr. Bush in the key foreign policy speech of his presidential campaign, at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in Simi Valley, Calif., on November 19, 1999: "Our realism must make a place for the human spirit. This spirit, in our time, has caused dictators to fear and empires to fall. And it has left an honor roll of courage and idealism: Scharansky, Havel, Walesa, Mandela. The most powerful force in the world is not a weapon or a nation but a truth: that we are spiritual beings, and that freedom is 'the soul's right to breathe.' In the dark days of 1941 -- the low point of our modern epic -- there were about a dozen democracies left on the planet. Entering a new century, there are nearly 120. There is a direction in events, a current in our times. 'Depend on it,' said Edmund Burke. 'The lovers of freedom will be free.'"

Mr. Bush continued: ". . .the basic principles of human freedom and dignity are universal. People should be able to say what they think. Worship as they wish. Elect those who govern them. These ideals have proven their power on every continent. In former colonies -- and the nations that ruled them. Among the allies of World War II -- and the countries they vanquished. And these ideals are equally valid north of the 38th parallel. They are just as true in the Pearl River Delta. They remain true 90 miles from our shores, on an island prison, ruled by a revolutionary relic. . . ."

In that same speech, Mr. Bush said, "If I am president, China will know that America's values are always part of America's agenda. Our advocacy of human freedom is not a formality of diplomacy, it is a fundamental commitment of our country."

And in that same speech, Mr. Bush also said, "Even as we support Russian reform, we cannot excuse Russian brutality. When the Russian government attacks civilians -- killing women and children, leaving orphans and refugees -- it can no longer expect aid from international lending institutions. The Russian government will discover that it cannot build a stable and unified nation on the ruins of human rights. That it cannot learn the lessons of democracy from the textbook of tyranny."

Mr. Bush hasn't "derided" the advancement of human rights; he has urged it. As for his advisers, the Times doesn't name any who have derided the advancement of human rights. But certainly John Bolton and Paul Wolfowitz, in the spectrum of foreign policy thinking from those who deride the advancement of human rights to those who are forceful advocates for the spread of freedom, stand decidedly among the vanguard of those who support the spread of freedom.

As for the Times's claim that President Clinton sacrificed relations with Russia and China in favor of an emphasis on human rights, that is just laughable. Under Mr. Clinton relations between America and mainland China were probably the warmest they have ever been since the Communists took power there, even as the human rights situation worsened. Mr. Clinton's party took campaign contributions from the Chinese Communists and the Clinton administration transferred sensitive dual-use technology to China. Mr. Clinton broke the linkage between human rights and trade with China, to the dismay of the AFL-CIO. In the case of Russia, the Clinton administration funneled billions of dollars in World Bank and International Monetary Fund aid to Russia despite the Kremlin's crackdown on freedom of the press and despite Russia's brutal war in Chechnya.

Smartertimes.com generally hesitates to speculate about motivations for the Times's lapses of accuracy, but this is one of those cases when what the newspaper writes is just so far removed from reality that a reader really has to strain to see it as anything other than partisan Bush-bashing and Clinton-cheering.

Blaming Religion: The lead article in the Arts & Leisure section of today's New York Times, by the newspaper's architecture critic, appears to blame religious authority for the September 11 terrorist attacks. "As we have now tragically learned, the erosion of religious authority is not universal," the critic writes. Perhaps he is hoping for the universal erosion of religious authority? That tragically didn't help much for the victims of Communism and Nazism. The Times critic contrasts the eroded traditional religious authority with what prevails in America. "Our religion is progress -- material, intellectual, spiritual. This faith is compatible with the search for the good, and perhaps a prerequisite for it," the critic says.

Well, far be it from Smartertimes.com to stand against "progress," but the Nazis and the Communists acted in the name of material and intellectual progress, too, and they were stopped in part by those for whom traditional religious authority had not eroded.

It is true that evil acts are sometimes committed in the name of traditional religious authority, and that intellectual and material progress is often good. But the Times critic understates the positive aspects of religious authority in America and elsewhere, and he overstates the positive aspects of the search for "progress."

An article on page B3 of today's New York Times paraphrases "John L. Esposito, director of the Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding at Georgetown University."

"But, he said, radical movements have often drawn in middle-class people whose convictions led them into violent illegality. Among such people, he said, were the men who assassinated President Anwar Sadat of Egypt in 1979," the Times reports.

In fact, as one distinguished Smartertimes reader noticed this morning, Sadat was assassinated not in 1979 but on October 6, 1981. It's not clear whether the error was introduced by Mr. Esposito or by the Times, but in any case, it was apparently not caught by an editor before publication.

Electronics: Another astute Smartertimes reader, Bill Schweber, the executive editor of an electronics design magazine, writes this morning to comment on an article on page B2 of today's New York Times about Global Positioning Systems. The Times writes, "Its small antenna sends signals to a satellite, which automatically determines the coordinates of an airplane in flight."

Writes Mr. Schweber, "This is completely wrong. The GPS system works the reverse way: the handheld unit receives signals from several satellites, and based on these signals, internally performs calculations that determine where the receiving unit is. There is no signal from the GPS units to the satellites. The Times has both the direction of signal flow wrong and the function of the satellite versus the handheld unit wrong." Plus, one might add, the number of satellites -- Just "a" satellite isn't enough.

The site HowStuffWorks.com confirms Mr. Schweber's account: http://www.howstuffworks.com/gps1.htm

An article in the national section of today's New York Times quotes Salam al-Marayati, director of the Muslim Public Affairs Council in Los Angeles. "American Muslims, he said, should also insist on being consulted on counterterrorism policy because of their expertise on Islam and Islamic movements," the Times reports.

This is really rich. The Times lets it slide totally unchallenged. What kind of expertise does Mr. al-Marayati have to offer?

Well, the Los Angles Times reported on September 22, 2001, "Al-Marayati was interviewed the day of the terrorist attacks, by Warren Olney on KCRW-FM's "Which Way LA?"... The discussion then turned to suspects. According to the transcript, Al-Marayati said, "If we're going to look at suspects, we should look to the groups that benefit the most from these kinds of incidents, and I think we should put the state of Israel on the suspect list because I think this diverts attention from what's happening in the Palestinian territories so that they can go on with their aggression and occupation and apartheid policies..."

Arab Neighbors: An article by Martin Indyk on the op-ed page of today's New York Times asserts, "We can't confront Iran at the moment because we would lose the support of its Arab neighbors and Europe." Leave aside Europe. Iran is bordered by seven countries -- Iraq, Turkey, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Turkmenistan, Afghanistan and Pakistan. Of these exactly one is Arab -- Iraq. Iraq, which is led by Sunni Muslims, fought a long bloody war against Iran, which is Shiite. And we don't have the support of Iraq to lose, anyway. Mr. Indyk's claim is unfounded.

Wrong Photo: The "National Briefing" column of today's New York Times carries an item about a settlement between the Los Angeles Police Department and seven journalists, "including David Horowitz, a veteran television consumer reporter." The photo the Times runs with the story is not of David Horowitz the veteran consumer reporter but of David Horowitz the president of the Center for the Study of Popular Culture. They are two different people and they don't look much alike.

Mass Selling: An editorial in today's New York Times claims, "Reducing the capital gains tax might provide an incentive to save when the economy recovers, but in the short term it would lead to mass selling in a faltering stock market." The last time the capital gains tax was cut, stock prices soared. What's to say that the money people get for selling stocks won't be reinvested in other stocks? If you take the Times illogic to its illogical conclusion, the newspaper ought to support a 100% tax on capital gains as a way of bolstering the stock market. When you think about it that way, the ridiculousness of it becomes clear. The capital gains tax doesn't just discourage selling -- it also discourages buying.

Abrams: A front-page article in today's New York Times quotes "Floyd Abrams, a first amendment specialist with the Manhattan law firm of Cahill Gordon & Reindel." No disclosure of the fact that Abrams and Cahill Gordon represent the New York Times on First Amendment matters. This would be no big deal, but it was only August 18, 2001, that an article in the New York Times business section was scolding the editor of Variety for essentially the same practice -- plugging a lawyer without disclosing that he was a client of that lawyer.

A front-page article in today's New York Times runs under the headline, "Bush Steps Up Appeal to Afghans To Rid Their Country of Taliban."

The article reports, "Also today, Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi of Japan pledged his country's support in the fight against terrorism, in contrast to Japan's neutrality in the Persian Gulf war."

Japan was not neutral in the Persian Gulf War. The government in Japan gave America about $8 billion to help pay for the war. On January 17, 1991, when the war began in earnest, Prime Minister Kaifu expressed Japan's "firm support" for the anti-Iraq coalition forces. There was some grumbling at the time that Japan didn't send troops to fight. But "neutrality" is not an accurate characterization of the posture of a country that spent about $8 billion directly to support the 1991 war against Iraq. It's certainly not accurate to talk about an offer of support being a "contrast" to what happened in 1991. Japan pledged support in 1991, too.

This the second time in the past two weeks that the Times has, in a front-page story, botched a basic fact about who was on which side of the Gulf War. On September 19, 2001, a front-page story reported that "Egypt and Jordan were both crucial allies in the 1991 coalition against President Saddam Hussein of Iraq." In fact, as Smartertimes.com noted back on September 19, Jordan was at most neutral in 1991, a stance that was widely interpreted as sympathetic to Saddam. The Times has yet to run a formal correction of the September 19, 2001, article. So it will be interesting to see if the newspaper bothers to correct today's error.

Capital Gains: Alan Greenspan's advice to Congress that now is not the moment for a capital gains tax cut is the subject of a massive, front-page headline in this morning's New York Times. "Strong Opposition; Fed Chairman Is Among Those Warning About Capital-Gains Cuts," the Times headline says. One has to read way, way down into the article to learn that "Mr. Greenspan restated his support for reducing or eliminating the capital gains tax in the long run."

Note: In observance of Yom Kippur, Smartertimes.com will not appear on Thursday, September 27. The next update will be Friday morning September 28.

A dispatch from Jerusalem in the international section of today's New York Times reports, "If Mr. Bush had his way, an American knowledgeable about the peace effort here said, the meeting between Mr. Peres and Mr. Arafat would have taken place on Sept. 14. Instead, two days later, Mr. Sharon imposed a new condition: 48 hours of 'absolute quiet' before any talks."

The notion that the Israeli demand that Yasser Arafat cease orchestrating violence against Israel is a "new condition" is truly laughable. A Palestinian renunciation of violence was a condition for Israel's signing of the 1993 Oslo Accords and for every agreement Israel has signed with the Palestinian Arabs since then. What is perhaps new is that Mr. Sharon is insisting that the Palestinian Arabs adhere to that commitment. In any event, since Mr. Sharon took office, he has insisted that he will not negotiate under fire. His requirement for a cessation of violence before resuming negotiations has steadily dwindled -- from two weeks, to ten days, to a week, to now, apparently, a mere 48 hours.

The Times writes, "The administration interpreted that condition as an effort by Mr. Sharon to cooperate." Clearly, the Times interpreted it otherwise -- not as an effort by Mr. Sharon to cooperate, but as an effort by Mr. Sharon to impose "a new condition." In the context, though, Mr. Sharon in fact isn't imposing a new condition -- he's relaxing a longstanding insistence. It's a concession, not a new condition. The Times interpretation is unjustified.

The same Times article reports, "Mr. Arafat has kept his distance for almost 10 years from Syria, which the Bush administration has listed as a sponsor of terrorism." It's the U.S. government that has listed Syria as a sponsor of terrorism, not the "Bush administration." The Clinton administration had done the same thing. The most recent Patterns of Global Terrorism report that the Bush administration issued was released in April 2001 -- barely three months after the administration took office -- and based largely on material and judgements amassed by career civil servants and by Clinton appointees. The Bush administration has kept Syria on the list of state sponsors of terrorism, but it didn't make the initial decision to put Syria on the list in the first place. Syria was on the list when Bush came into office.

Rush: A dispatch from Seattle in today's New York Times reports on how talk radio shows are responding to the terrorist attacks. The article makes reference to "Mr. Limbaugh" without ever mentioning the host Rush Limbaugh's first name.

The same article reports, "talk radio often presents the kind of voices rarely heard on network television or in big-city papers. In general, listeners tend to be white, male and conservative." Funny how the shortage of white males on network television has gone unnoticed. Someone better tell Dan Rather, Peter Jennings and Tom Brokaw. As for conservatives being "rarely heard" in big-city papers, well, look who's talking. In fairness, maybe the sentence about listeners is intended as a new thought, distinct from the sentence about rarely heard voices.

The lead, front-page article in today's New York Times reports on American plans for Afghanistan. "The last thing Washington wants is a chaotic situation that creates a haven for terrorists and destabilizes the neighboring countries," the Times reports.

The Times lets this statement pass unchallenged, but it is in fact characteristic of the flawed assumptions that have contributed to America's vulnerability.

"A chaotic situation that creates a haven for terrorists." In fact the situations that spawn terrorists are characterized not by chaos but by an authoritarian repression characterized by an abundance of dictatorial order. Osama Bin Laden was born into wealth in Saudi Arabia, a kingdom characterized by ruthless and strict enforcement of Islamic law. Other terrorist-spawning regimes, like Egypt, Syria and Iran, are characterized by a state-controlled press, powerful secret police forces and dictatorial control. The chaos inherent in a free-market democratic republic like America provides natural safety-valves for discontent and leads to general contentment of the population. The enforced order of the dictatorships leads to misery and to the tendency of repressive regimes to channel the frustration of their citizens into external aggression in the form of terrorism. There may be some situations, like South Florida or Logan Airport, where chaos allows terrorists to flourish for brief periods. But in the long run the terrorist threat emanates not from chaos but from an excess of order.

"Destabilizes the neighboring countries." One of the countries that borders Afghanistan is Iran. Another is China. Iran is a state sponsor of terrorism, according to the U.S. State Department. American courts have found the government of Iran responsible for attacks on American civilians. The Iranian parliament approves each year a budget that includes a line-item to fund support for terrorism. They debate it there the way Americans would debate, say, how much to spend on ethanol subsidies or highway improvements. The hard-line clerics who rule Iran have repeatedly shut down reformist newspapers and violently repressed student demonstrations. In this context, destabilizing Iran shouldn't be the "last thing" Washington wants. It should be the first thing. China is a similarly authoritarian regime that has been repressing its own people and arming Iran with missile technology. "Stability" in these countries is a euphemism for "continued lack of liberty." Would the Times, and the officials it quotes in Washington, have opposed the American revolution for fear it would "destabilize" the colonial regime in the colonies? Would the Times have opposed Solidarity in Poland for fear it would "destabilize" the Soviet Union? A little instability in the short run may lead to more freedom and democracy (and stability, for that matter) in the long run.

Friendly: A front-page article in today's New York Times refers to "friendly Muslim countries -- Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Jordan and Pakistan." Saudi Arabia and Egypt may be friendly to terrorists, but they are not friendly to the United States. Saudi Arabia has been resisting American requests to use bases there to attack Afghanistan, according to reports by the Associated Press and the Israeli newspaper Ha'aretz. As Stephen Schwartz writes in the Spectator, "The Saudis have played a doublegame for years, more or less as Stalin did with the West during the Second World War. They pretended to be allies in a struggle against Saddam Hussein while spreading Wahhabi ideology, just as Stalin promoted 'antifascist' coalition with the US while carrying out espionage and subversion on American territory. The motive was the same: the belief that the West was or is decadent and doomed." As for Egypt, the Middle East Media Research Institute has reported that columnist Mahmoud Abd Al-Mun'im Murad of the Egyptian government-sponsored daily Al-Akhbar wrote on August 28, "The Statue of Liberty, in New York Harbor, must be destroyed because of following the idiotic American policy that goes from disgrace to disgrace in the swamp of bias and blind fanaticism." He further announced that "the age of the American collapse has begun." The inability to distinguish between friends and enemies is a fault that leads to vulnerability.

Petty Crimes: A dispatch from Berlin in the international section of today's New York Times reports on a judge who was nicknamed "Judge Merciless" by some Germans "for tough sentences for petty crimes, including long terms for a graffiti sprayer and a woman who scratched parked cars." Well, the Times news department may consider graffiti spraying and car-scratching to be "petty" crimes, but they aren't petty to those whose homes or businesses or cars are being vandalized. Is a swastika repeatedly sprayed on a German synagogue a "petty" crime?

New In Letters: The Letters about the Times section was updated over the weekend with letters about topics including war movies, terrorist chic, and the families of American servicemen. The Letters about Smartertimes section was updated over the weekend with comments about topics including Michael Bloomberg's taxes, the "working class," and the digital divide.

An article in the Week in Review section of today's New York Times reports, "When Mr. Bush call the terrorist attacks evil, many Americans instinctively agree with him. But philosophers and theologians worry that, as the president casts the fight against global terrorism as a crusade of good against evil, Americans will come to feel not only morally alive, but morally superior. And from that, they say, may flow an abandonment of moral principles. . . ."

The article doesn't appear to quote a single theologian, though it does quote an acupuncturist. Nor does it quote any philosopher who is glad that the president is casting the fight against terrorism as a battle against evil.

Beyond being poorly supported and presented with little balance, this assertion that distinguishing between good and evil leads to "an abandonment of moral principles" is a good way, itself, to assure the abandonment of moral principles. Americans, in general, are morally superior to terrorists. This seems so obvious that it is silly to state it. But here the Times is trotting out philosophers and imaginary theologians to assert that distinguishing between good and evil causes the good to descend into evil. In fact, the erosion of the distinction more than the making of the distinction is what spreads the evil.

Good and Evil: Speaking of eradicating the distinction between good and evil, check out the masterpiece of moral equivalence offered up by one writer on page 22 of today's New York Times magazine: "In the Middle East, where the gods were born, the ancient narratives are glorified again. After the 1967 war, for example, Jewish settlers awaiting the Messiah founded settlements among their ancestral stones, risking their lives, ready to kill and to die in the name of a sacred narrative, soon to be vindicated. So in the Muslim world the sacred historical destiny of Islam is reasserted. The will of God is to be done on earth."

The Jewish settlers on the West Bank overwhelmingly seek to live in peace. They are in essentially a defensive posture as a buffer against the Arab armies that have repeatedly invaded Israel and tried to destroy it. The Muslim terrorists, on the other hand, killed about 6,000 American civilians in an act of naked aggression. For the Times magazine writer to liken the Jewish settlers to the Muslim terrorists is unwarranted.

Faceless Enemy: A dispatch from Cambridge, Mass., in the New York Times magazine today reports, "in this instance the enemy had neither face nor name."

The face of Osama Bin Laden appears on page B5 of today's New York Times, as do the names of 19 hijackers and photographs of 17 of their faces. The seven countries on the State Department's list of sponsors of terrorism have leaders with names and faces. It's just nonsense to assert that "the enemy had neither face nor name."

The New York Times tries again today at a profile of Tom Ridge, the Pennsylvania governor who has been chosen by President Bush to do what the FBI, CIA, Defense Department, Justice Department and National Security Council were supposed to be doing already -- defending America against terrorist attacks.

"Last year, Mr. Ridge, a rising star in the Republican Party, was said to be Mr. Bush's choice of running mate, a selection that some people said was dropped because of Mr. Ridge's moderate position on abortion," the Times says.

A "moderate" position? Well, according to the Weekly Standard, Mr. Ridge "opposes partial-birth abortion. He favors parental consent if a minor wants an abortion. He's against taxpayer-funded abortion." It will come as news to advocates of unfettered abortion rights and to many other readers that the Times news department considers these positions "moderate."

At the same time, while a member of the House of Representatives, Mr. Ridge "voted against forcing abortion providers to notify the parents of minors who had sought an abortion. He once voted to repeal the Hyde Amendment, which bars taxpayer-financed abortions," the Standard says. It will come as news to opponents of legal abortion that these positions are "moderate."

It would have been more helpful to readers if, rather than characterizing Mr. Ridge's position on abortion as "moderate," the Times had said what his position is. On the abortion issue, views are such that what strikes some reporters as moderate may strike some readers as extreme.

The same profile quotes a Pennsylvania political scientist saying that, as governor, Mr. Ridge has "been able to spend money, expand programs . . . cut no programs, lay off no employees." Well, without laying off employees or cutting any programs, it is pretty amazing that Mr. Ridge was able, as the Times claimed yesterday, to become known for "cutting state spending in half." No correction in today's Times of that claim, which Smartertimes.com pegged yesterday as bogus.

Moderating Effect: Speaking of moderation and extremism, today's New York Times carries an article that reports, "Statements by President Bush and other leaders appear to be having a substantial effect on moderating the behavior of Americans, said Ziad Asali, president of the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee, the largest Arab-American group in the country."

It's remarkable that the New York Times would quote Dr. Asali without any intended irony as assessing the "moderating" of behavior, because Dr. Asali and the organization he heads are not moderate. They are extreme.

Consider, for instance, his position on Jerusalem. The Jerusalem Embassy Act of 1995, which passed which passed the Senate by a vote of 93 to 5 and the House by a vote of 374 to 37, says, "Statement of the Policy of the United States. (1) Jerusalem should remain an undivided city in which the rights of every ethnic and religious group are protected. (2) Jerusalem should be recognized as the capital of the State of Israel." Yet, as chairman of an anti-Israel, divide-Jerusalem outfit called the American Committee on Jerusalem, Dr. Asali wrote letters to executives who portrayed Jerusalem as part of Israel, saying, "East Jerusalem and the Dome of the Rock are not part of Israel. . . Portraying East Jerusalem as part of Israel. . .misrepresents the status of the city."

The last time America took action against Osama Bin Laden's training camps in Afghanistan, the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee issued an action alert asserting, "the U.S. government overstepped the bounds of international law by taking this unilateral action. . . The U.S. government acted in total disregard for the killing of innocent civilians."

According to material compiled by the Zionist Organization of America, the then-president of the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee, Hala Maksoud, praised Hezbollah as "the heroic resistance" (ADC Times, June-July, 1996); then- American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee president Hamzi Moghrabi called Hamas "very respectable" and "not a violent organization." (Rocky Mountain News, Nov.27, 1994). The U.S. State Department considers Hamas and Hezbollah to be terrorist organizations. The State Department is correct about that. So it's really hard to fathom how the New York Times could be quoting the head of the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee on "moderating" behavior, when the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee itself is an example of extremism, not moderation.