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BuzzMachine
by Jeff Jarvis
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April 30, 2003
Tonight's dilemma
: West Wing or Tina Brown? Hmmmm.
Christmas in May: A Janeane Garofalo interview
: Oh boy, oh boy, I go to Alternet and what do I find but a Janeane Garofalo interview with the Progressive that was done just as war started. A few crunchy nuggets: Q: What's your opinion on the current state of the mainstream media?
Garofalo: The mainstream media has, in my opinion, been so grossly negligent, so disturbingly devoid of authentic debate, and actual dissemination of information....
The parents of the troops who die and the parents of Iraqi civilians who die should have the right to slap a lot of these media outlets with a suit of criminal negligence. Military parents would have a legitimate case, especially against Fox and the New York Post for cheerleading this thing the whole way, for waving the flag, and using knee-jerk, sycophantic, pseudo-patriotism as a tool to galvanize public opinion. Say what? Sue on what basis? Opinion? You're the one complaining that people are daring to disagree with your opinion and now you want people to sue others over their opinions? That's every bit as stupid as it sounds. Q: Do you think it's possible to have a liberal media network?
Garofalo: It is possible. What's not possible is to penetrate the wall of opposition. The myth is it can't work. Phil Donahue was working, but MSNBC took it off for their own rightwing agenda. Phil Donahue was working? Compared to what? If Phil Donahue is the best video provocateur (we) liberals can come up with, it's a sad and sorry state. Q: Do you have plans to tour again?
Garofalo: No.... I have no plans to travel at this point, in part because nothing's funny to me.
Q: Why is that?
Garofalo: There's been such an assault on democracy here, and the mainstream media is complicit in it. We are living in neo-McCarthy, post-democratic times. Democracy is being criminalized. Democracy is being ignored....
I never imagined that I would never care about dumb things anymore. I never imagined I'd be a person who could transcend that kind of nonsense. But beyond that, I never imagined I would be penalized for speaking out in favor of social justice. I never thought that anyone who spoke out for peace, and diplomacy, and social justice would be pilloried.
I'm frequently depressed, just have a general malaise. And I don't mean a malaise of indifference, I mean a malaise of sadness and fear. I've always been alarmed by some of the things that the mainstream media does and by what the government does, no matter who's in office, but the broken heart is new. So, once again, it's all about Janeane: Janeane the transcender of nonsense, Janeane the pilloried spokesperson for peace, Janeane who just doesn't care about dumb things, Janeane the queen of ennui.
You can never, never underestimate the ego of a star, even a small one.
Janeane: Democracy is far from dead. Disagreement is what democracy is all about.
If you can't stand the heat, get out of the spotlight!
What's wrong with Ashleigh Banfield?
: The transcript of the speech that got Ashleigh Banfield in trouble with her bosses just went up on -- of course -- Alternet. What's striking about it is how naive it is. She's not reporting, she's babbling.
Ambassador Rumsfeld
: Donald Rumsfeld takes soldiers' questions in Iraq right now. He's asked about Iraq and OPEC and starts to answer but then stops himself: "This is diplomacy and I don't do diplomacy. You may have noticed."
SARS central
: When the BBC is good, it's very, very good. The beeb's SARS update.
If news could spread like SARS
: An expat in China who's moving out of Beijing tries to find news about SARS on TV: Last night I saw yet another dimension to the evils of China's censorship machine. I was watching CNN in my hotel when a guest was introduced to dicusss how China's lies about SARS in Beijing were damaging the nation's political system. This sounded interesting and I sat up to listen. Suddenly, to my utter amazement, the screen went black. It stayed black for about ten minutes with no sound. Then, just as suddenly, the picture and sound came back, just in time for me to hear the announcer thanking the speaker for his time. China is still obsessed with censoring the news and will go to any lengths to keep people in the dark about its crimes, whether we're talking about Tiananmen Square or SARS.
If democracy could spread like SARS
: A secular, pro-democracy activist in Iran issues a statement that hints at asking for outside (read: American) help there: We invite non-governmental reformists, constitutional monarchists, religious-nationalists, socialists and all freedom lovers who understand the necessity of unity, to join us in the only alternative for liberty without bloodshed. Otherwise the oppressed people of Iran might seek other ways to escape cruelty, corruption, injustice and poverty and ask foreigners for freedom -- like in Afghanistan and Iraq.
Co-conspirators
: Robert J. Lieber in The Chronicle of Higher Education does a great job of exposing, summarizing, and puncturing the conspiracy theories of the when-did-they-become-anti-Semitic-left regarding the supposed neocon cabal running the U.S. with ambitions to run the world: A small band of neoconservative (read, Jewish) defense intellectuals, led by the "mastermind," Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz (according to Michael Lind, writing in the New Statesman), has taken advantage of 9/11 to put their ideas over on an ignorant, inexperienced, and "easily manipulated" president (Eric Alterman in The Nation), his "elderly figurehead" Defense Secretary (as Lind put it), and the "dutiful servant of power" who is our secretary of state (Edward Said, London Review of Books).
Thus empowered, this neoconservative conspiracy, "a product of the influential Jewish-American faction of the Trotskyist movement of the '30s and '40s" (Lind), with its own "fanatic" and "totalitarian morality" (William Pfaff, International Herald Tribune) has fomented war with Iraq -- not in the interest of the United States, but in the service of Israel's Likud government (Patrick J. Buchanan and Alterman).
This sinister mythology is worthy of the Iraqi information minister... [via Die Zeit]
April 29, 2003
Yo, Tina
: I Want Media interviews Tina Brown. Gawker is so jealous it could spit nails.
Beep... beep... blip!... beep...
: I have a few things in common with Gary Farber. We have blogs. And we spent time in the emergency room this week with things beeping, blipping, bleeping, and burping at us.
For me, it's the apparently never-ending aftermath of 9.11. I breathed in a few cubic yards of pulverized building. I got pneumonia. I had a breathing test. They gave a spritz of something probably illegal in 49 states (but I could have pulled a week of all-nighters). My heart lost its rhythm (as a pasty white Protestant, my hold on rhythm is tenuous at best). It has lost its rhythm a few times since. I now take drugs. I stoke my rich, deep hypochondria. So I thought I'd lost that rhythm again but, as it turns out, I only lost the insurance company some money as they told me that earthquake in my chest every 20 seconds is just a "palpitation." What a cute word. So I take more drugs. I go home, embarrassed. But I go home.
Gary had it worse. He had pneumonia. He had high blood pressure (high enough to squirt a firehose, it would seem). He left with powerful drugs. But, ever looking on the bright side, he notes that at least he doesn't have SARS.
I note all this from the blog of the good Thomas Nephew, who makes mention of trying out our panting, wheezing, sweating, hallucinating blog friend's Paypal box and that sounds like a good idea, eh?
Homefront
: There was a lot of wailing and nashing at the arrest of an Intel employee, Maher Hawash, as if this was some obvious act of the big fascist state. I said nothing because I have at least enough faith in our system to believe that there had to be some reason to hold the guy and if not, the truth -- or at least the questions -- would emerge. Well, he was just charged with aiding al-Queda and the Taliban. I don't care if he had a respectable software job. If he helped our enemy, he is our enemy. If he helped terrorists, he is a terrorist. And he will receive a fair trial. [via Instapundit]
The sun never sets
: Nick Denton, back off the beach, writes today about the dangers of America as the guarantor of the world's safety or democracy or economy: A guarantor, whether an insurance company or a central bank, typically encourages perverse behavior. Countries borrow too much, and their banks lend too freely, both in the expectation of a bailout by the International Monetary Fund.
The US, by assuming the role of global guarantor, runs an analogous risk. By guaranteeing the security of Israel, it ensures that no Israeli government will make a territorial settlement with the Palestinians. By guaranteeing the global order, unilaterally, the US encourages the caprice of a country such as France. By supporting the Mubarak regime in Egypt, the US removes the pressure for democratization. With an external power guaranteeing stability, the people of Egypt and other puppet states can never take ownership of their own predicament. As bankers sometimes say, the road to hell is paved with guarantees....
So, a therapeutic suggestion. Now is the perfect time for the United States to withdraw from the Korean peninsula. The prospect of an American imperium is on people's minds. Having demonstrated its power in Iraq, the US can abdicate without revealing weakness....
Let someone else worry for a change. It will do them good. Spoken like a true British imperialist.
It was the colonial infection of Britain, France, Germany, Holland, and even Soviet Russia that got us in this mess, let's remember: Not so much guaranteeing the security of their colonies (though that was the conceit) but babying them so they never did develop their democratic muscle and so they resented nations with power.
Britain planned to be the guarantor -- having been the creator -- of Iraq for a few generations and then just said, to hell with it, let somebody else worry about it.
I hope that's not what we're about. I hope we do mean what we say: That we will nurture democracy and security and economies in Iraq and in Palestine and in a few other choice places and then leave friends -- as we did, truly, in Germany and Japan. I hope we set and meet that high standard again. But at least we have experience at it.
The imperial example is not ours. It is, again, Britain's and France's and so on and so on.
Lock up Grandma!
: Geraldo Rivera threatens to get a "real weblog." [via I Want Media]
Sars and Chinese blogs
: Preston Whip, a Hong Kong blogger, took a tour of Chinese blogs to see what they were saying about SARS and among them he found this class analysis of disease: The ruling class accumulates capital by brutally squeezing peasants. The rich live in obscene luxury while peasants are impoverished. SARS has erupted as a result of the unhygienic conditions the impoverished class face. The ruling class live separately from these conditions, but they have a moral duty and must help shoulder the responsibility to establish a fair foundation for all people in society. The price of the rich living extravagently is the disorder of the lower classes and a disease like SARS. Today, he also links to a story about rioting in one Chinese town over SARS.
Could disease bring revolution?
: And Preston responds to my post about smelling a rat in China's decision to close Internet cafes. He thinks my suspicion of cynical behavior from Chinese leadership -- taking this convenient opportunity to try to shut down Internet usage -- may be right but he also gives us an interesting view of the spread of the Internet in China: Beijing, like most other large Chinese cities, has seen cyber cafes pop up like bean sprouts. The ensuing competition has meant that access to the internet is affordable (I’ve seen hourly rates as low as 2 yuan - or cheaper than a bottle of beer), which means that just about anyone with a job, the skill and inclination can log on....
Many of my friends and acquaintance in China are wired at home. A lot of people logging onto bbs or chat rooms (both very popular with university students), or blogging, are therefore doing it from their own room. Sure, people hook up from cyber cafes too. But enough are tapping away at home to make any complete shutdown impossible. And then there’s mobile phones and text messaging. If disease doesn't bring revolution, the Internet will....
: Meanwhile, BWG of Hong Kong gives us the Chairman Maosk.
: Update: See Donald Sensing expanding the point above.
The Persian bridge
: Hoder (does he need an introduction? he's the Persian blogging pioneer who has been reporting on the arrest of Iranian blogger Sina Motallebi) writes about this very blog today. It's on his Persian blog -- so I have no idea what he said -- but you can see the headline in English here: "Jeff Jarvis is trying to bridge between Iranian and American blogosphere in his BuzzMachine" or "ديالوگ بين بلاگستان ايرانی و آمريکايی "
To Hoder's many readers: Welcome!
: Thanks to Sobh in the comments, here's a translation: He says: Jeff Jarvis is one of famous webloggers/journalists of English blogland. He's got concerned to Persian weblogs after Sina's arrest (some may say he is a spy of CIA!) and in his weblog named Buzz Machine, is making a dialog, as he says, between Persian and English blogland by pursuing English Iranian blogs. For example yesterday he made a permanent section in his weblog for links to Iranian weblogs and listed some most active ones in it. Except that, he is continually quoting from some interesting Iranian weblogs. (I wish there were more Iranian weblogs, getting updated from inside Iran.) Jarvis has launched Entertainment Weekley and some other magazines before and now is running Advance.net. Spy? I'm sure he's just joking but it would improve my image and explain lots of mysterious behavior.
: Just so we're clear, I know that Hoder was joking and I loved the joke. I don't want anything to be gained or lost in the translation here...
April 28, 2003
Me Tarzan, You Norm
: Norman Mailer says the real reason we went to war was to boost the ego of white American males: The key question remains — why did we go to war? It is not yet answered. In the end, it is likely that a host of responses will produce a cognitive stew, which does, at least, open the way to offering one’s own notion. We went to war, I could say, because we very much needed a war. The US economy was sinking, the market was gloomy and down, and some classic bastions of the erstwhile American faith (corporate integrity, the FBI, and the Catholic Church, to cite but three) had each suffered a separate and grievous loss of face. Since our Administration was probably not ready to solve any one of the serious problems before it, it was natural to feel the impulse to move into larger ventures, thrusts into the empyrean-war!...
As a matter of collective ego, the good white American male had had very little to nourish his morale since the job market had gone bad, unless he happened to be in the Armed Forces. And when did you stop beating your wife, you cigar-chomping he-man, you?
The prince and the pundit
: Prince Charles on nanotechnology: The prince has raised the spectre of the "grey goo" catastrophe in which sub-microscopic machines designed to share intelligence and replicate themselves take over and devour the planet. I eagerly await Glenn Reynolds' response.
Persian v. Arab weblogs
: Nima Arian (a commenter, below) points me to a post by Salam Pax expressing his jealousy over Iranian/Persian weblogs: I am really jealous.
The First Persian Top Weblogs Competition
this blog won the second prize for blog design it has a a picture of an oriental tea glass. istikan chai dear?
when are we arabs going to have something like that? and why have persians taken to blogging so easily than arabs? why isn't there a single arabic weblog? why?why?why? Salam's own will, I hope, be the first of many.
And Kurds and Turks and Jordanians and Palestinians and Saudis and on and on...
The World Trade Center Memorial
: The competition for design of the World Trade Center Memorial has opened. Find the rules here.
Designers must summarize their entire concept for the 4.7-acre site on one 30-by-40-inch presentation board, meaning that only high-concept (read: starkly simple) ideas can possibly win.
I am working on mine.
Rebirth: Iraq v. Japan
: Astigma, a Persian blog, sees parallels between Japan post WWII and Iraq post Gulf II. Japan developed technological prowess fast not by reinventing wheels but by reverse engineering existing technology. So, says Astigma, should Iraq reverse engineer democracy elsewhere in the world to succeed quickly. That is exactly the kind of help we need to give Iraq. To use another modern bizbuzzword, we need to implement best practices.
The arrest of Sina Motallebi, Day 8
: Hoder has an update on the arrest of the Iranian blogger -- a post that demonstrates the great complexity of life and politics in Iran. Sina said to Iranian Students News Aganecy (ISNA) he was hopeful that the court was going to accept his explanations and even woudn't take him to the court. He was worried that some people's support, might make new problems and new questions for him in the interogation process. He sounded confident and calm, but as I said, worried. He talked to ISNA while he appeared in a court in Mehrabad Airport (!) for the first time after a week of being in costudy.
This is what makes it complicated in Iran, nobody really knows if his/her support would help the detainee or hurt him/her more.
More on the Baghdad Blog Daily
: Glenn Reynolds points us to a piece of Slate's David Plotz on the seven habits of highly effective democracy building in Iraq and one of them hammers the point I've been making lately about using the web -- specifically weblogs -- to foster free speech and a free press in Iraq: 5. Use new technology and media to instill the habits of democracy. Democracy is a learned behavior. The experiences of the former Soviet Union and Cambodia are evidence that democracy stumbles if citizens don’t know how to act like citizens. In a totalitarian state, people are trained to shut up and avoid trouble. They don’t understand the new behavior that democracy demands. They even fear it. This is a disaster since democracy can’t flourish with a timid citizenry.
Iraqis can’t learn these habits overnight, but new technology and media can help speed up the process. As National Endowment for Democracy President Carl Gershman and others point out, the Internet is a superb tool for bringing people together and prompting them to organize. E-mail and the Web help far-flung people ally over shared religious or political or economic interests — sometimes for ill, as with al-Qaida, but often for good. In Kosovo, for example, an NGO has posted an online training course for political activists, a free guide for anyone who is trying to figure out how to start a political party.
The Internet — an endless bazaar of clashing ideas — also demonstrates the virtues of free speech to people who don’t know them, says Sheryl Brown, who co-directs the Virtual Diplomacy Initiative at U.S. Institute of Peace. (A number of readers, in fact, have suggested scattering Internet kiosks across Iraq to seed free speech.)
Who rules
: This from the Reuters pool report on the meeting on the future of Iraq going on now: There are clear differences among Iraqis on what role the United States should play, delegates say.
Some (mostly non-exiiles) want the Americans to have a direct role in the interim period to prepare for elections, because they don't trust each other.
Others (mainly exiles) say only Iraqis should rule Iraq and the US should have less influence in the interim period.
Mustapha Qazwin, who lives in the United States, a sheikh and a doctor, said: "We are having healthy discussions between people inside Iraq and who were outside Iraq. This is a democratic process and we are still debating the best route forward."
Suheil al-Suheil, a Baghdad lawyer, said: "There are differences over the role of the Americans. We here prefer the Americans to rule us in the interim period."
Asked why, he said: "We are not ready to handle this yet. Saddam's orphans are still alive." The nonexiles are the ones who are living the reality of Iraq.
Roses are dead, violence is you...
: Michelle is holding a Saddam Birthday Poetry Contest.
Iranian humor
: Hoder, the trailblazing Iranian/Canadian blogger I've quoted often lately, maintains both an English-language blog and a Persian blog but even there, he's nice enough to show us his English headlines, including this: Joke: Saddam wrote a will before the Americans attacked. His wish was, "When I die, give my hand to Khamenei, my moustache to Rafsanjani and my balls to Khatami."
Iraqi democracy
: Alt.Muslim wonders about the form of democracy that can grow in Iraq. When al-Qaida links couldn't be found and the search for weapons of mass destruction didn't move our allies into action, bringing democracy to the suffering people to Iraq became the new raison d'etre for "Operation Iraqi Freedom." But what does democracy mean to a people who have never practiced it? How do you bring a society from tribal identifications with ethnic or religious groups into an arena where respect for the will of the majority forms the foundation of the state? The writer debates the role of Islam -- the Turkish model or (unspoken) the Iranian model? I didn't make clear in my post on Iraqi democracy below that religion can be involved in a democracy, of course but it can't replace democracy. England, Italy, Israel, Ireland and many other countries have official state religions. Yes, my American DNA brings with it a strong belief in separation of church and state to insure the freedom of both. But it need not be an absolute. Still, I do see a clear line: Do the people get to choose their leaders and their laws or does a religious leadership choose both for them? One is democracy, the other is religious dictatorship.
What he says
: Thomas Friedman: As far as I'm concerned, we do not need to find any weapons of mass destruction to justify this war. That skull, and the thousands more that will be unearthed, are enough for me. Mr. Bush doesn't owe the world any explanation for missing chemical weapons (even if it turns out that the White House hyped this issue). It is clear that in ending Saddam's tyranny, a huge human engine for mass destruction has been broken....
Whether you were for or against this war, whether you preferred that the war be done with the U.N.'s approval or without it, you have to feel good that right has triumphed over wrong. America did the right thing here. It toppled one of the most evil regimes on the face of the earth, and I don't think we know even a fraction of how deep that evil went. Fair-minded people have to acknowledge that. Who cares if we now find some buried barrels of poison? Do they carry more moral weight than those buried skulls? No way.
So why isn't everyone celebrating this triumph?
April 27, 2003
B-Roll: Arab
: I've added new weblogs, mostly by Iranians, under B-Roll: Arab (on the right). I'm not sure what the proper description is: Arab, Persian... In any case, there are lots of interesting English-language blogs from that part of the world. Expect more.
: Bless the world of weblogs. Moments after putting up this post, I got advice to change to B-Roll: Persian. Done.
: Now I'm already in a MidEast PC problem. Some say Persian is too limiting. I would like to be able to include weblogs from anywhere in that neighborhood. Should it be B-Roll: Mideast?
What does Democracy mean (for Iraq)?
: The people of Iraq must have a democracy. They deserve nothing less.
: Coming home the other night, I turned on the radio and heard someone with an accent say dismissively that you just can't force democracy on a country -- namely, Iraq. I came in too late to hear who said it. And, unfortunately, the NPR reporter didn't bother to question the statement. For it was hogwash.
Democracy was "forced" on Germany and Japan and it has worked splendidly, just as well as (if not better than) it has worked in countries that came by democracy through popular uprising and revolt. Their Germans and the Japanese -- once assumed to be incapable of managing democracy themselves -- have long-since and resoundingly proven all their condescending naysayers wrong. They have proven that when people are given a chance to govern themselves, they will do it eagerly and well -- in fits and starts, perhaps, but in the end, well.
: Now there is a school of thought that asks, what if the Iraqis choose a theocracy or even a dictatorship instead of democracy? That's certainly what we're hearing from Shiite clerics in Iraq. I'm hearing rumblings of this from the anti-war club.
A superb weblog by an Iranian called the Eyeranian poses the question well: To me a dictatorship, mixed with visions of divine responsibilities is probably the most horrendous type of repression possible. Close to a quarter of a century of an autocratic government in Iran, bringing mass executions, murders, large-scale imprisonments, terror, oppression and corruption is the prime confirmation of this line of reasoning....
Having said that, one of the bases for any true democracy is to accept the people’s prerogative to occasionally make wrong choices and even more often, to make choices that you and I may not like or agree with. But at the end of the day, the choice is completely theirs. By that I mean that if in a free and open election Iranians choose to keep the current regime, it would be vital for people like myself to value and honor their choice, yet reserving our right to oppose it in peaceful fashion and by non-violent means.
This of course also applies to the people of Iraq. We invaded their country supposedly to “establish democracy” and give them the option of selecting their own form of government, elect their true representatives and enact laws according to their own sets of values and cultural make-up. However, a short few weeks after the fall of Saddam Hussein regime of terror, the hawks running globe’s only super-power are trying to take away that very right. By this line of reasoning, if the people choose a theocracy -- a dictatorship, even -- isn't that democratic because it was, at least, a choice?
: I respectfully disagree. The problem here is the definition of democracy.
Democracy is not a one-time event: Go into the polls and pick your government or your leader and then lump it for the foreseeable future.
No, democracy is a process.
First and foremost, democracy is a living, ever-changing social organism. Its ability to change is exactly what gives the people power over their leaders. Essential to any definition of a democracy is that it allows the people to change leaders -- and thus the course of government -- at any time, in a peaceful process, without having to resort to revolution.
Second, a democracy is never just its leader. If you go to the polls and pick a leader and then that person cuts off democratic process, he becomes a dictator, whether religious or secular, whether an ayatollah or a Saddam.
Third, a democracy is its constitution. That is, the process of democracy -- the means by which the various interests and needs of the people are both enforced and protected -- is enshrined in a constitution (rather than in a person or a party). We must work with the people of Iraq -- as we worked with Germany and Japan and are now working with the people of Afghanistan -- to create a system of governance that gives the power permanently to the people and protects that power through representative institutions, through checks and balances, and through the ability to change that constitution when the people will it.
Fourth, a democracy must protect the rights of all the people, including minorities. Especially in a fractious nation such as Iraq, just taking power away from one group and giving it to another -- just letting the Shiite religious leaders rule because they wield the majority -- is trading one brand of dictatorship for another. That majority vote would not be democracy; it would be oppression. No, the constitution and the process of elections must allow for a give and take of all groups and all interests.
Fifth, a democracy depends on a well-informed electorate and thus it must support free speech, a free press, and independent education.
: A democracy respects its people.
Those who say that Iraqis cannot handle democracy give them no respect.
A revolution starts with one blog
: Hossein Derakhshan, aka Hoder, runs the Iranian weblog Editor:Myself where he not only has been reporting on the arrest of Iranian weblogger Sina Motallebi (and today he recalls witnessing the repression of free speech in Iran first-hand), but I now learn that he also practically single-handedly started the Iranian blogging revolution.
A fellow blogger named Khodadad wrote an article about Hoder and the start of Iranian weblogs: It all started when an article appeared in a popular Iranian news site, written by a twenty something former Iranian journalist, a refugee of the shut-down reformist newspapers in Iran, who lived in Canada. He had discovered the format of blogging, and manipulated the latest common operating system to write blogs in Persian. In a few simple paragraphs, he explained what web-logs are, and how he had managed to created a template that allowed one to use the Unicode system to write Persian. He was perhaps hoping that a few Iranians would pick up the lead and make a presence in the world of web-logging. Well, he was right about “some” picking up the lead, but not about how many. In less than two months, more than 200 Iranian blogs were created on the internet! That was November of 2001. Now, a year and four months later, than number is closer to 1,500! The piece tells about how women started a network about their rights in Iran via weblogs and about the many other uses the youth of Iran have made of this powerful publishing tool.
: I'll repeat one more time -- and keep repeating it until I get a call from the White House or the State Department or a major underwriter agreeing that this is a good idea they should get behind: Imagine if we helped start a simple network of weblogs in Iraq. Imagine how they could foster free speech, free press, and democracy. Imagine how they could empower the youth of Iraq to build their future. Imagine how they could foster communication and understanding in the rest of the world.
Or instead of imagining, maybe we should just do it, eh?
Dependence and democracy
: Hooman, an Iranian blogger, raises an interesting question regarding economics and democracy: Imagine you live in a country with a diverse economy. Imagine you keep 70% of your income in your pocket and end up paying 30% to the government as tax. Your government hinges on you and your fellow countrymen and women to stay afloat then.... Now imagine you live in a country with an economy living off … let’s say the oil. And that is the job of the government to sell it and distribute the profit among its subjects … oops, I mean its population. So the 70% you keep in your pocket is from the guys in the top. It is obvious that an oil-rich government with a nature as such is not so keen then to collect the 30% tax from you. Reclaiming the money that's already given out? It won't be so shocking then to learn the tax laws are not really enforced....
Anyway, the point that I am starting to miss to drive home is: Once a government, whom you feed, occasionally pushes you around, what do you expect to see from a government who feeds you?
Does it explain why some oil producing countries move toward democracy when the oil prices are low and move the opposie direction when their pockets are full of the green back note, i.e. US $? All the more reason that we must help Iraq build an economy built on the value of its people, not just its oil
Just what are they trying to stop?
: I smell a cynical act China's decision to shut entertainment venues to stop the spread of SARS. Included in that is the closure of Internet cafes. Why Internet cafes and why not trains, restaurants, stores, and other public venues? Perhaps they also want to stop the spread of information?
April 26, 2003
Pandemic
: A British scientist warns that a billion people worldwide could be infected with SARS by year's end -- more than are infected with AIDS (though SARS is not as fatal).
Smoking guns
: The Telegraph says it has found a bin Laden-Saddam link.
Anonymous blogging in cases of danger
: I'm not generally in favor of anonymous blogging. What makes blogs so good is that people are willing to put their names and reputations behinds them. But there are plenty of circumstances in which anonymity are required for safety -- take, for example Iran, where Sina Motallebi was arrested.
Pierce Wetter suggests some standards that would allow bloggers and their readers to keep their identities hidden from the mullahs.
And, voila!, here I see [via Rollberg] Invisiblog, which lets you publish a blog that's untraceable.
See also Mixmaster for anonymous email (misused by spammers but handy here). [via Intern.de]
Have at it, Iranians! And Cubans. And Saudis. And Chinese....
Free speech ain't free
: Harry complains that the decisions by the Times of London and now the Independent to charge for their content -- business arguments aside -- will only shrink the audience and debate (and thus influence) of their writers and what they have to say. Right. Fisk has become well-known over here because of the Web.
Humorless
: Last night, as I reported, George Bush joked with Tom Brokaw that he wouldn't be inviting Jacques Chirac to his ranch anytime soon. Now the Independent is getting all huffy about this and so is Buzzflash: A New Low for America. Bush Takes This Country's Diplomacy Into the Gutter. He Will "Punish" France. Bush Publicly Boasts That He Won't Invite Chirac to His Ranch. It Is Way Past Time for Impeachment. But First, Give Bush His Rattle Back. .IT WAS A JOKE, YOU TONE DEAF IDIOT! Granted, the guy's no David Letterman, but even I could hear the twang of irony.
When did the left lose its sense of humor, ferchrissakes?
And besides, who'd want to go to Bush's dust heap in the middle of nowhere? Certainly not a Frenchman. There isn't an oyster within 900 miles.
If ever a place needed a bar and its residents a drink...
: Afghanistan's only bar has been shut by a terorrist threat.
Political primary, Iraqi style
: The (still impressive) Christian Science Monitor blog reports that the CIA's candidate to lead Iraq was assassinated by Shiites.
Naked truth
: Matt Welch is one of the few to have seen something truly frightening before I took it down.
Problogging
: Go read Ken Layne on the case of the newspaper blogger who was shut down.
April 25, 2003
How low can spam go?
: I just go my first spam "from" Iraq in the Nigerian spam tradition: "This transaction is now only known by you, myself and my old sick mother."
... and a million other victims of your sick, criminal trespass.
No soup for you, Jacques
: My favorite line from Bush's interview with Brokaw: Asked about Chirac, Bush says: "I doubt he'll be coming to the ranch anytime soon."
I'm going to get in trouble for this
: I'm sorry. I can't help myself. After hearing the news that youths are being held with other Afghan terrorists and combatants in Cuba, I can't get Alan King's Hello, Muddah, Hello, Faddah tune out of my head but with new lyrics: Hello, Mullah
Hello, Fatwa,
Here I am at
Camp Guantanamo!
They've got Korans,
With lots of pages,
They've got really big Marines
who guard us in our cages. But seriously, folks: OK, I'm sorry. That was wrong. Hold your comments...
When I first heard that juveniles were being held at Guantanamo, I was disturbed.
But yesterday, I listened to the Pentagon briefing reminding us that these youth were alleged to have killed people. And I looked back at some news stories about youth -- youth! -- being sent in as human bombs by Palestinian nuts. And I reminded myself that these people do not respect their own youth; they send them into battle. I also watched the news, on which a Pennsylvania youth shot up his school; we've put these youth in jail.
So holding youth may not be unjustified.
But at the same time, we should not be stupid as we try to win not just wars but also hearts and minds. Is it worth holding a terrorist teen when it's going to make us look bad?
Amen to that
: Rumsfeld says the government of Iraq will not be an Iranian-style government run by clerics. Finally, somebody said it.
Liberal New York no longer
: New York was supposed to be the capital of the left but now the NY Observer declares our Apple the capital of neoconservatives. The story gives us a map to NY Neos -- ground zero being, of course, Rupert Murdoch's HQ on Sixth Avenue. It gives us Neo history. And it give us Neo humor: "I have been amazed by the level of conspiracy-mongering around neocons," said David Brooks, an editor at Mr. Murdoch and Mr. Kristol’s Weekly Standard, and author of Bobos in Paradise. "I get it every day—the ‘evil Jewish conspiracy.’ The only distinction between ‘neoconservative’ and ‘conservative’ this way is circumcision. We actually started calling it the Axis of Circumcision."
Sina Motallebi update: Day 4
: Hoder gives us an update on the arrest of an Iranian blogger. Other Iranian bloggers are, understandably, scared.
: I pick out an Iranian weblog at random from Hoder's blogroll and here's what I read: Apparently the fall of the dictator has had a big impact on Iranian Islamic regime. Those who are in control who possess non-elected power have already felt something.
Recently, a lot of web sites have been banned by a direct instruction from Iranian ministry of telecom. This list includes hadisara, home page of satirist Hadi Khorsandi. Also an entertainment web site called roozi.
But most amazing of them all, is nedstat, which is a hit counter I am using....
I've been trying to stay out of trouble; Stay away from politics. But this one [that is, the arrest of Sina Motallebi -ed.] has nothing to do with politics. It's just jeopardizing my freedom of expression. Arresting this guy just because he expresses his ideas in his weblog is not reasonable in a modern world.
This stupid act will lead to anonymous weblogs (like mine) which are much harder to control. : And this: No pain no gain? So tell me how many thousand years we're to suffer before we can finally gain our Democracy? ...
What factors gave rise to the cold war between the Mullahs and Iranian Journalists?
There are at least twenty million people who have similar views as these journalists!
How many more Iranians will end up in the oppressive Iranian regime's prisons? : And read this, too -- the target is the Internet: Arrest of Sina Motallebi isn’t the first time someone has been arrested for expressing his opinion in Iran, and it certainly won’t be the last.
This is however part of a new offensive with new targets. It is not the political activists or human rights advocates that are being targeted this time. It’s not even the so called “reformers” or those mildly critical of regime’s tactics or approach. This time it is the youth and the ones who have found new ways of expressing their dissatisfaction with the ruling class that are the new enemy. In particular, freedom of expression via the internet is now being targeted....
Speaking of his web log content, his last few posts before being summoned were (in order) about Iranian newscaster’s inability to pronounce names properly, retirement of the “out of this world champion” Michael Jordan, his son’s teething problems and a reprint of an already published statement by Kambiz Kaheh, a film critic arrested on bogus charges of distributing illegal videos. Hardly risky material.
What Sina represents to them however, is far bigger. He is the symbol of all the young, intellectual, internet and technology savvy new generation this regime has failed to suppress. The latest battleground is the cyberspace and thousands of Persian web logs, from the progressive and politically charged ones to teenager’s sexual experimentations or mundane adolescent babblings is the chosen arena it will be fought in.
Media ironies
: Ted Turner complains that too few companies own too much of U.S. media.
But, Ted, you sold your media company to a media company; you singlehandedly reduced the number of media owners in the U.S. Seller's regret, I guess.
: Ted also called Rupert Murdoch a "warmonger" because of FoxNews' support of the war and the Guardian explains: "Mr Murdoch openly backed the war on Iraq but the unquestioning support of his Fox News channel has caused controversy and astounded UK broadcasters, which are bound by law to maintain impartial and balanced news services."
Bound by law? Now that's a hard law to enforce.
And if it were enforced, would the BBC stay out of the pokey for its opposite view of the war?
: Well, in its own fog of war, the BBC thinks it's enforcing that law of balance. BBC General Director Greg Dyke said in a speech reported by the BBC, of course: "If Iraq proved anything, it was that the BBC cannot afford to mix patriotism and journalism. This is happening in the United States and if it continues will undermine the credibility of the US electronic news media." Ask Andrew Sullivan whether he agrees.
: The problem here is, again, that FoxNews proved to be a gigantic success in the war and nobody in media quite knows what to do with that.
I've said before that -- thanks to the success of FoxNews, the breadth of viewpoints that cable choice allows, and the open expression that weblogs allow, and the audience's embrace of all that -- we are headed to a new media world in which credibility still counts (of course) but in which opinion and perspective aren't necessarily the antithesis to credibility that American journalism -- and, if we are to believe them, British TV journalism, cough, cough -- have long held. We are headed to a world in which news is more compelling and less purposely dull. We are headed to a world in which news matters more.
And, by the way, key to this view is trust in the intelligence of the audience, the people: They can decide what's fact and what's opinion and what their own opinions should be.
: Tim Blair says all this more eloquently than I could. Plus, it sounds tougher with his accent.
Ambivaloid
: Kurt Andersen, in an interview with Minneapolis' The Rake [via Romensko] reveals that he and Graydon Carter are thinking of coming out with a Spy retrospective -- good idea; I know someone who'll love that (and so would I).
He also talks about his decision to support the war, "ruefully and fretfully," which he wrote about in the NY Times magazine. But to be anti-anti-war isn't the same as being pro-war, and that's the sort of the weird ambivalent gray zone where I was for a long time, and still remain, I guess....
On this particular thing with Iraq, I can't understand how anybody can have absolute conviction on either end, frankly. So I'm both a contrarian, I guess, and a kind of chronic ambivaloid. That, as near as I can tell, is a coinage -- no Google references at all for ambivaloid -- and it's a good coinage. In these days of strong opinions, on cable TV or on weblogs, to be amvibalent is to be contrarian.
Canada: It's catching
: The SARS panic is about to get out of hand. Conventions in Toronto are canceled (well, OK, if you fear that nobody's going to come and you're going to lose a fortune). Kids' sports games are canceled. Catholic pilgrims are disinvited from a U.S. even. But here's my favorite: the Washington Post cancels a meeting with Toronto Star execs. Paul Gallo, manager of the Star's editorial computer systems, said he received a call "really late" from Post executive John Benner, cancelling the meeting.
"He left a message, sounding really embarrassed and apologizing, to say the tour of the facility couldn't take place," Gallo said from Washington yesterday.
Gallo ... said Benner told him that he'd been instructed "by his executive editor that the tour wouldn't be a good idea for liability reasons. He explained that, if anybody at the Post were to get ill after our visit, there'd be liability implications." And the National Post sends a reporter to the WHO in Geneva: The hotel desk clerk quickly stepped two paces back yesterday when I told her I was from Toronto. "SARS," she blurted, and for a split second she covered her face with her hands. I wasn't sure if the gesture meant she was embarrassed, or if she was trying to protect herself.
Perhaps she thought that I might infect her. Kill her.
So I asked. "Are you afraid of me?"
"Yes," she replied.
April 24, 2003
Bearing all
: Well, a little discreet nudity certainly got the Dixie Chicks lots of coverage.
The flash of flesh didn't hurt my old magazine, Entertainment Weekly, either.
A hint of nudity certainly goosed Gawker's traffic.
And my own audience is asking me when I'm going to follow (birthday) suit (see the comments here).
So who am I to deny my public? Who am I to pass up a cheap joke? Who am I not to use any stupid trick for traffic?
Herewith the cover of my next magazine...
: Update: I concede defeat. This is far funnier. [via the comments]
Nabbed
Fox and CNN says Tariq Aziz is in custody.
Political correctness knows many authors
: Now this is beatiful: Sen. Sanctimonious has pissed off not only gays and reasonable Americans, he has also pissed off polygamists for lumping them in with adulterers and gays.
The age of populist publishing
: I've been saying to anyone who will listen that the tremendous potential of this blogging thing is that it brings the power of publishing -- yes, quality publishing -- into the hands of the people. More such tools will follow (photo, audio, video, collaboration, marketing tools, search tools... and they'll all get slicker and easier, note the great new stuff coming from Movable Type). And more power will follow (witness the noise blogging is making in Iran; witness the worldwide spread of it).
Here's Google CEO Eric Schmidt explaining (at last) the acquisition of Pyra in this context: I believe that this notion of self-publishing, which is what Blogger and blogging are really about, is the next big wave of human communication. The last big wave was Web activity. Before that one it was e-mail. Instant messaging was an extension of e-mail, real-time e-mail.
The next step in general for information is the self-publishing part. If somebody takes the time to write something, having Google understand that is very important to that person. So if you view the world as one person at a time, getting that person, that author to understand that we value, we index, we search, and we care about their information is a very important part of our strategy....
We’re all still reeling from the fact that there are not homogeneous news sources anymore, that the magazine and publishing industries are becoming more variegated, more distributed, and smaller and more targeted.
The Internet, in particular what’s happening at Google now, is the extreme of this. This is not necessarily all good, but it’s clear that if you extrapolate this out, that there will be a million weblogs of communities that are very distinct and very strong. And they don’t favor one political party or one particular view of life. Many other media companies -- newspaper, magazine, TV, radio, online -- will need to start looking at the world in this way: from the other side, from the perspective of the audience, the audience as publisher.
War, who is it good for?
: Michele has a deliciously cynical view of the anti-war show biz crowd: Protest as a career move. I mean, who would really know that Tim Robbins still existed (except as Mr. Sarandon) if not for his public tirades against George Bush? Would Bill Maher have a tv show or Michael Moore an Oscar or Arianna Huffington a website if not for loud, public dissent?
It's a marketing tool. The people who decry capitalism and all things America are the ones scooping up the cash by the fistful because they cry the loudest.
Don't cry for the Dixie Chicks. They have risen to the top of the pop culture ladder because they said some nasty things about the president.
Ain't that America? As the war fades from the headlines, will these celebs find themselves suffering attention withdraws? Will their careers also fade?
Ow, Canada
: Canada is up in arms over the WHO issuing a travel warning to Toronto because of SARS.
Reality check: I was supposed to be in Toronto this week with my family for vacation. But we cancelled for two reasons: war (which was on when we were reserving) and SARS (which wasn't this bad when we were planning). The truth is that we're very glad that we're not headed there now because of SARS.
Critic, criticize thyself
: Do we sense the irony in Tina Brown making fun of retired generals and retired cops appearing on cable criticizing employed generals and employed cops? An old-style prewar pack frenzy hit when the Laci Peterson murder case returned to the American airwaves. Retired homicide detectives instantly supplanted retired generals as the electronic experts du jour. Does Tina sense the irony, being that she is a retired editor making fun of employed editors on cable (when her show finally launches in April)?
She tries so hard in her latest column to find greater meaning in the fickle interests of TV and its audiences: war and Pfc. Lynch today, Laci tomorrow, Elizabeth and Chandra yesterday. Why is cable news so addicted to missing girls and women? Is it because so much of the audience consists of boiling white males who feel stomped on by the economy and their wives, and girls in peril make them feel protective and virile? The rescue fantasy has never been more potent. This from the former editor of Vanity Fair!
Methinks she's trying too hard to find something to say in the media about the media. Methinks she's thinking too hard. Methinks even she knows it. I wonder when Americans will get tired of being told what to do and think. By publicists. By bloggers. By the Pentagon. By talk show hosts. We are punch-drunk with other people’s prescriptions and opinions. Our think-tanks are overflowing. There are media mullahs everywhere you turn. Yes, and you're one of them.
Naked celebs!
: The mere promise (albeit dashed) of pictures of a half-naked celebrity has sent traffic on Gawker soaring.
Sina Motallebi update
: MSNBC's Will Femia has a roundup on Iranian blogger Motallebi's arrest.
Will links to a post on Blogalization complaining that bloggers have not spread this meme as aggressively as we should.
And there are links to the arrest of a Tunisian blogger in jail because of what he said online. The full story here.
There's a warning in all this: When journalists who work for big-time publications get arrested because of what they dare to say, they still have the power or at least threat of an organization and its printing presses behind them. When a lone blogger gets arrested because of what he dares to say, he has no one but his family ... and us.
: New: Mark Glaser reports on the arrest and bloggers' support for Motallebi at OJR.
Sin
: Don't believe that every Iraqi Muslim is like the crawling, self-flagellating, scalp-slicing pilgrims we've seen on TV this week (just as you shouldn't believe that every American Christian is Jerry Falwell).
Ibidem points us to a report by Rosie Dimanno in the Toronto Star on booze and cigarettes flowing onto the streets of Baghdad: Two weeks ago, American troops eagerly traded their MREs — Meals Ready to Eat (or, in grunt parlance, Meals Rejected by Ethiopians) — for individual cigarettes, none so coveted as a good old Marlboro, but even the revolting Iraqi brands would do. Nowadays, there's a fag stall of all flavours every 10 metres and almost as many sidewalk vendors of alcohol: Johnnie Walker, Dimple, Bells, Absolut, all $25 (U.S.) a bottle. Suddenly, tubs of ice-cold Heineken and Amstel have appeared, replacing the Turkish-brewed Efes Pilsener that was the suds-of-choice (actually, no choice) in Saddam's hermetically sealed Iraq.
Where did all this contraband come from, almost overnight? But then Iraqis, after 12 years of United Nations-imposed sanctions, have become expert at smuggling and bootlegging. Oil, spirits, what's the dif?
Yet for a Muslim country, ostensibly disapproving of alcohol and tobacco, Iraqis sure do enjoy indulging their vices. Because U.S. troops and foreign reporters are not the only consumers of this stuff. And rare is the Iraqi male, Sunni or Shiite, without a butt between his fingers, even with prayer beads intertwined.
It delights me immeasurably to see so many Muslims enjoying the secular life. It's humanizing, and rather ecumenical in its way, for the practitioners of this self-consciously pious religion to burn the candle at least at one end. This is most reassuring, especially as the Shiite clerics — so tightly circumscribed by the secular-cum-Sunni Saddam — appear poised to flex their turban-sanctioned muscle in pursuit of a grim Islamic society. Amen.
April 23, 2003
Where is the charity?
: I'm surprised and saddened that we have not seen an outpouring of charity from the people of the U.S. to the people of Iraq -- and I'm especially shocked that I have not seen this from the churches that opposed the war.
Why? It could be that we think they're the enemy (though we helped enemies that attacked us, Germany and Japan). It could be that we think they're strange (images on the evening news of millions of Muslims slicing their scalps with swords and beating themselves silly would add to that reputation). It could be that we think they're oil-rich and don't need help (though, obviously, they need more than just royalty checks to build a sustainable economy). It could be that our economy's still to much of a mess and we hope we don't have to volunteer (tsk-tsk). It could be that we are buying the Iraqi PR and we think we'll be out of there in a month (letting one tyranny replace another; that would be irresponsible, wouldn't it?).
There's no excuse. We should be reaching out to help build a successful society -- a tolerant society that accepts its various flavors of Islam (not just the biggest) as well as outsiders; a robust economy that shares the wealth of oil broadly and uses it to build a stronger base of expertise and value; a learned culture that builds on the land's tremendous history and creates a future based on free sharing of information and opinions.
But instead, when I go to Google News and search for "Iraq" and "charity," what I get are links about British MP George Galloway allegedly using a charity to take money from Saddam Hussein; an indictment for using a charity to send money to Saddam; heads of charities protesting war; and problems with getting charity to Iraq. And I see this disturbing note: "U.S.-based relief agencies are mobilizing to feed and heal Iraq, but so far they are straining to illustrate the need to potential donors and reach those who are suffering. The chaos of war -- followed by rampant looting and lawlessness -- is partly to blame, they say, and many who might give are only beginning to focus on the plight of Iraqis. There has been no huge refugee crisis to galvanize donors, the agencies point out. Delay in sending relief could hamper the American campaign to demonstrate good will toward Iraq and quickly relieve widespread suffering."
I'm a bit ashamed of us.
: Now as I'm thinking this through, I come across a fascinating story at the oddly named site Killing The Buddah by Tim Shorrock, the son of missionaries who went to Japan after World War II with the blessing and active support of Douglas McArthur and our occupation government. So began one of the strangest episodes of the Cold War: MacArthur's attempt to harness Christianity in his mission to transform Japan into an anti-communist and pro-American bastion of democracy. Between 1946 and 1950, over 2,000 American teachers, social workers and evangelists came to Japan in response to a recruitment drive launched by mainstream churches and blessed at the highest levels of the U.S. government....
Going by numbers alone, the American crusade was a miserable failure. In the political turbulence after World War II, millions of Japanese joined the Japanese Communist Party and aligned themselves with the Japanese Left to organize and join labor unions and demonstrate against the spread and testing of nuclear weapons. Fifty-six years after the war, the number of Japanese who call themselves Christians remains around one-half of one percent of the population, the same level it was before Pearl Harbor.
But judged on human terms, the American missionary influx after 1945 was profound; it helped heal the wounds of war and exposed the defeated Japanese to a new kind of American, neither businessman nor soldier, willing to forgo the comforts of home to share in the uncertainties and poverty of postwar Japan. "They were young and idealistic, and identified with Japan," recalls Kiyoko Takeda Cho, a prominent Christian intellectual who lives in Tokyo and was one of my parents’ first Japanese friends. "They represented not the ruling country, but came for reconciliation." : The last thing we should be doing -- the very last thing -- is trying to convert a single Iraqi to any other religion.
What we should be trying to do is help Iraqis build a strong and vibrant future -- and that means immediate humanitarian aid for food and medicine; it means long-term economic aid to build an economy that is based on more than oil; it means educational aid that helps demonstrate the power of free thinking; it means media aid to help demonstrate the power of free speech; it means political aid to help them build a democracy (which isn't easy!). The more we help build a strong future for Iraq, the better it will be for everyone: For Iraq and for our own reputation.
But charity starts at home -- that is, it starts with giving here, from the anti-war side who said they care about the people of Iraq and the pro-war side who said the same. And I'm not seeing dollars or fingers raised to do that.
On radio, nobody needs to know you're naked
: Anne Gerrels, NPR's brave correspondent, is back from Baghdad with tales of war: From her hotel in Baghdad, Garrels used a smuggled satellite phone to file her reports in the dark of night, a measure designed to elude ever-watchful Iraqi security officials.
"I decided that it would be very smart if I broadcast naked," Garrels recounts. "If, God forbid, the secret police were coming through the rooms, that would give me maybe five minutes to answer the door, pretend I'd been asleep, sort of go 'I don't have any clothes on,' and give me maybe a few seconds, minutes, to hide the phone."
Irrelevance
: The Catholic archbishop of Baghdad's view of Iraq's future: Archbishop Sleiman said it is wrong to try to impose democracy through force on a people who do not yet fully understand democratic concepts, including the proper relationship between religion and government. What a hock of hooey. What would he prefer? Tyranny? Theocracy? Anarchy? [via Ibidem]
Hero in the house
: The man who tipped us to Pfc. Lynch's location is headed to the U.S. [via au Currant]
Bubble boy busted
: Frank Quattrone behind bars.
About time
: I've been screaming for years that Take Your Daughter To Work Day is sexist. Well, it's fixed. Thursday is take your whatever to work day. I'm taking my son.
Big blog news!
: Movable Type announces its version of Blogspot (hosted blogging), Typepad. Bravo. And Movable Type announces the hiring of Anil Dash as VP of Big Stuff. Bravo II.
Sina Motallebi update:
: Hoder reports: He has a lawyer now. Association for Iranian journalists has appointed a lawyer for him.
Incoming
: Every morning, I check out my Technorati link cosmos to find out who's linking to me and what they're saying. This, after all, is the true dialogue, the real community among weblogs. It's not just in the email, it's not just in the comments (though I love them), it's really in the links. I'll admit to a little snobbery: I first look at the links that come from sites that themselves have lots of incoming links; it's link juice. But I also look at the lonely voices in the woods who have no links. A few stops on my tour this morning:
: Page 3 Girls (got your attention?) says, regarding the arrest of Sina Motallebi: Mr. Motallebi ... is in jail in Iran because he did what Tim Robbins, Susan Sarandon, Janeane Garofalo, Michael Moore, Martin Sheen, Ed Asner, Alec Baldwin, Jane Fonda and one-third of the Dixie Chicks can do in the United States with complete freedom and protection from the law (despite their contentions to the contrary): Expressed an opinion about the government. The conditions Motallebi now endures are completely unlike those faced by anti-war protestors whose contrived acts of civil disobedience get them temporarily thrown in some local lockup. : On the news below that his paper is going to start charging for reading Robert Fisk, Dustbury wonders: Actually, if The Independent really wants to make some serious cash, what they should do is register Robert Fisk's name as a trademark, and then demand royalties every time a blogger Fisks™ somebody. : To my great relief, after months of prowar harping and anti-terrorist haranguing, I still have my political credentials intact: Kevin Holtsberry accuses me of "leftist overreaction" in my slap at Sen. Sanctimonious and the Presbyterian homophobes.
: Ryan Olson says the arrest of Motallebi changes his mind about something: I never really bought that Weblogs As An Important Journalistic Advance theory, but when you read stories about Iranian students being arrested for their writings it seems like there's something interesting going on. : Oliver Willis says I'm "willfully ignorant," which I think is a step above being ignorantly ignorant.
: And lots of good people are spreading the word, the way we do, by linking to reports on Motallebi's arrest.
Sina Motallebi update
: From Editor:Myself: : Sina has come home with some officers. They wanted to obtain some more documents, maybe his PC, books, notes, videos, etc.
: Former deputy of Interior minister, Mostafa Tajzadeh, has condemned the arrest and said that why do they make young people angry with these kind of actions.
April 22, 2003
Mom!
: I'm watching Madonna on MTV right now and I'm struck not by the pretentious celeb slather, not by the mediocre music, not by the religion for idiots, not even by the self-centered ego of it all. I'm struck by her age: She's old enough to be the mother to everyone in her audience -- the slutty divorced mom from down the street.
It's turn off pretentious bores week
: Here are people I hate:
1. Open-mouthed chewers. I don't need to hear you digest.
2. People who say they watch only PBS. Snobs.
3. The people behind TV Turnoff Week. So we should teach our children to turn off a source of news, information, drama, comedy, humanity, entertainment; that's a fine lesson. Would you be offended if I suggested Shut the Books week? I'll bet you would. But there's just as much crap on bookshelves as on airwaves (take a look at the best-seller section and then argue with me). This is just censorship by mob: Instead of destroying the art, we try to intimidate the audience. This is patronizing, anti-populist, anti-democratic, show-off crap.
4. People who don't wear deodorant in the summer.
5. Jacques Chirac.
Busted
: Dan Gillmor tries to draw a parallel between what's happening in Iran -- where they arrested blogger Sina Motallebi -- and here: Jailing political opponents isn't our style in the U.S., but just about every policy our current government favors would make it harder for average people to get news that's contrary to the conventional wisdom -- and the Bush administration, the most secretive in decades, is no friend of untrammeled speech in any event. Huh? Sorry, friend, but that makes no sense. What is happening here that has the slightest resemblance to arresting a man for what he says online? What's happening in Iran is serious and dangerous. What was happening in Iraq (pre-war) was serious and deadly. What's happening here? Nothing.
Gitmo kids
: News.com.au says child terrorists are begin held at Gitmo. Really?
Our American Taliban
: Everybody and his gay uncle has already hopped on the hopping stupidity of Pa. Sen. Rick Santorum's comments trying to equate homosexuality with bigamy, polygamy, incest, adultery, and probably Communism, too. Two-parent families, says Santorum, are good. Requiring people to work is good. So is banning late-term abortions and giving religion a greater role in government. Traditional welfare, on the other hand, hurts the family. Homosexuality, feminism, liberalism all undermine the family. Even parts of the Constitution can harm the family.
"If the Supreme Court says that you have the right to consensual (gay) sex within your home, then you have the right to bigamy, you have the right to polygamy, you have the right to incest, you have the right to adultery. You have the right to anything," the Pennsylvania lawmaker said in a recent interview, fuming over a landmark gay rights case before the high court that pits a Texas sodomy law against equality and privacy rights. That's as frightening as it is stupid. Jack Balkin, smart law professor, dissects other issues this raises and sees hope in calling this the last desperate gasp of the gay-bashing right. But that's not my point.
And before I get to my point, also consider this story today out of Sinsinnati: A Mount Auburn Presbyterian minister was found guilty Monday of marrying gays and lesbians in the denomination's first ecclesiastical trial dealing with the church constitutional issue. As I've said here before, this is just why I left the Presbyterian Church: because it has become an institution of hate and bigotry that thinks it should judge God's creations, because it is no place to raise my children. But that, too, is not my point.
And now consider this, on the Shia majority in Iraq threatening to impose a theocracy and bloody-stump Sharia law: :Ayatollah al-Sadr would have wanted an Islamic government for Iraq, based on the Koran and on Sharia (Islamic law). “It will be a different kind of democracy from the West. We believe that the aims of America are different from the aims of Islam,” Abdullarida al-Nasiriyah, a teacher from Basra, said....
Shias in Najaf seem to be undecided about the desirability of the harsher aspects of Islamic law, such as amputation for thieves and the stoning to death of adulterers. But women, they insist, will have to cover themselves in public.
And, according to Ayatollah Salih al-Taiee, one of Najaf’s leading clerics: “We will fight to prevent the drinking of alcohol.” This need not be undemocratic, he said. The logic is that since Shias make up a majority of the population and since all Shias believe in Islamic law, the Sharia codes represent the will of the Iraqi people.“This is a chance for America and Britain to show their respect for Islam in an Islamic country. If they do not, there will be great hatred against them, ” the Ayatollah added. Now here's my point: Religious fanatics scare me -- and not just Muslim religious fanatics who try to kill me. We have religious fanatics in our country, too. We have them in our Senate. We have them leading one of our largest allegedly mainline denominations. They have the religious freedom to do as they please; that is their sacred right -- their only sacred right -- in our country. But they do not have the freedom to impose their religion on others. That is the protection all are afforded. And that is the protection we must afford the Iraqis. For this Ayatollah to say that imposing religious tyranny is democratic is, of course, bullshit. For him to say that if he doesn't get to do that, he'll hate (read: kill) us is a threat. We can't allow the fanatics to rule fanatically. Does that mean we are imposing democracy, modernism, (gasp) Westernism on them? Call it what you want but yes: The people -- not the Ayatollahs, not the tyrants -- must rule without tyranny and fear and with freedom for all. That's the starting line. That is one thing that all Americans, hell, all civilized people -- left, right, prowar, antiwar -- must support: That is how we must define freedom for Iraq.
Those wacky Frenchmen
: From the world of sports: A French soccer player who celebrated a goal by stripping his shirt and putting his hand down his shorts was fired Tuesday by his Turkish team....
"It was not against anyone. It was just a private sign of joy,'' Nouma said.
Now you can boycott him
: The Independent is going to start charging for some online content -- including all stories by Robert Fisk, reports Vin Crosbie at Poynter's media blog (do damned permalinks; scroll till you find it).
How's that for a straight line?...
Hey, they should pay us to read him....
When he's wrong, will they give us a refund?...
Will he donate his cut to victims of war and imperialism?....
Did they ever think that the readers of Alternet don't have disposable income?...
Brazillian bloggers get rich
: While you're on that page, keep scrolling down until you find an interesting item reporting that Brazillian bloggers are invited to submit posts to the local Reader's Digest; the best every month will get picked up and paid $100.
Whatever happened to...
: Now this is a good idea for reality TV: Fox stations are turning Classmates.com into a TV show (without the damned popups). I assume we'll see homecoming queens turned into fat drunks; geeks turned into millionaires; high school sweethearts long since broken up and then divorced brought back togther....
Another mail attack?
: FoxNews is reporting that mail with a white powder found in the Tacoma post office has tested positive for a biotoxin. These preliminary tests are always less reliable. I'm finding nothing online about this yet.
: Here's a story from KOMO. Workers arrived for the graveyard shift at about 1 a.m. when a few discovered two envelopes with powder inside. A witness told KOMO 4 News that one envelope was addressed to a state government employee, the other to someone in Sequim. Fox is showing National Guard soldiers there with special tents used for testing.
: I will say that I'm impressed (and comforted) seeing the quick response with fancy equipment.
: The Dept. of Homeland Security says preliminary tests -- insert standing caveat emphasizing preliminary -- indicate the presence of plague or botulism, says Fox.
: The latest update: Homeland Security says no biotoxins. Nevermind.
April 21, 2003
Who's for what?
: The Guardian says the BBC is pro-war. If you try to parse that sentence, you will go insane.
Free Sina Motallebi
: A few notes on the jailed Iranian blogger:
: His weblog is no longer available; it's just blank. (Here it is in the Google cache.)
: You can sign a petition addressed to various dignitaries on his behalf here.
: Here's a banner in support of Motallebi created by another blogger, who is not posting it on his site because of a family connection in Iran. So I'm posting it here. Feel free to use it.
: Hossein Derakhshan, aka hoder, the blogger behind Editor: Myself, broke this news. Here's his latest report: More bad news are coming these days in Iran: daily paper, "Arya", which was to be re-published is banned; some other young female reporters (including Masoumeh "Masih" Alinejad) are in court, and many others that I can't remember now. Seems to me that hard-liners have started a new wave of pressure and this time they are targeting young journalists and activists. : See also this piece about the impact of weblogs on Iran by hoder: During the past 20 months, more than 10,000 Persian weblogs have been emerged. Their authors mostly live in Iran, where the number of Internet users hardly exceeds a half million....
The popularity of weblogs among young Iranians, suggests that great changes has happened in Iranian society during the past two decades, at least among the new generations of middle-class residents of big cities.... Individuality, self-expression, tolerance are new values which are quite obvious through a quick study of the content of Persian weblogs....
: They have provided first-hand reports from several events such as students protests;
: they have helped young people find new dates or know more about potential dates, in lack of legitimate dating services;
: they have helped parents to get to know more about their children’s values and norms;
: they have provided Iranian immigrants outside of Iran with first-hand information about the new and unofficial Iran (new values, new lifestyle, new slang etc.);
: some of well-known webloggers have been hired by newspaper publishers to write for them, something they had never had a chance;
: they have attracted several of top officials and politicians as their regular reader, in some cases they have commented on some posts in some weblogs;... : Note that last bullet. In January, hoder wrote about the attention -- good and bad -- that weblogs have been getting in Iran: I'm not exactly sure if this has happend anywhere else. But some top officials are not only reading and following Persian weblogs, but also are responding to and commenting about some posts in popular weblogs. : Some of you have scoffed at my suggestion that weblog newspapers can help develop new freedom of expression and ultimately freedom of the press in Iraq. Well, see what weblogs have brought to Iran, a country struggling with democracy and then imagine what they could do in Iraq. But see, also, the attention that weblogs are getting in Iran at all levels and the unfortunate results that can occur: namely, repression of the free speech weblogs enable. Persian weblogs need support just as Iranian and Iraqi democracy need support.
An Iranian blogger's perspective on the war
: I traded email today with hoder (above) about Motallebi and also about weblogs. I said I wished for more connections between Persian weblogs and English-language blogs. Language is clearly an issue but blogs such as hoder's, in English, are bridges. I said that as soon as I started reading and linking to German weblogs, I found that they started doing the same to me; conversations started; friendships formed. The German bloggers and I don't always agree but I think we respect each other and enjoy each others' virtual company. I hope for the same links to bloggers from Iran and soon Iraq and other Arab countries. It can only help.
Well, as I read deeper into hoder's blog, I found an interview he did with Sayed Pouya Razavi, the creator of Blogshares and an Iranian (now in the UK). There was a link to Razavi's own blog and there I found fascinating reaction to the end of the Iraq war. He is glad that Saddam is gone. Yet he opposed the war as immoral. But he blames the ineffectual peace movement for the war itself. The world should rejoice at the fall of Saddam's brutal regime....
I've always found the anti-war movement in the West niave and ignorant shielded by the comforts of a Western life and pretentiously dipping their toes into "Eastern Culture" as if it was some fad or fashion....
In the end, the anti-war movement contributed to this happening. Their inneffectiveness, their lack of focus and lack of solutions handed the war to the warmongers. It gave them exactly what they needed: a disorganised rabble that appealed only to its own kind.... [dominated by] the voices of suburbanite white kids whose arguments degenerated into name calling and wishy-washy anti-globalisation rants....
Yet, I think I'm beginning to realise that there is no anti-war movement. There never was. There are some smart folks who are opposed to this war but there is no movement. He is unsure about the future, torn between two views: One accepts the Bush/Blair line that we do come in peace, that 9.11 changed everything, that there can and will be a future without dictators. The other view fears that this will become a world of Us v. Them: Muslims already know their peaceful religion has been subverted in the public mind by a few rogues and the whole of Christendom is set against them. It always has been, the terrorists just confirmed ancient prejudices. For all its glorious progress European cultures haven't shaken off the yoke of Islamaphobia as they haven't for the most part shaken off the scourge of anti-semiticism. Faced with this reality and the bleak prospects ahead, what other choice is there but to resist by all available means? He says the next chapter in this story -- the next front in this war -- will be in Iran or Syria or America.
It's a fascinating essay. What I agree with and disagree with is not the point. What weblogs let us do is compare views of the world from across the world. Weblogs are a powerful tool. Iran's government, unfortunately, realizes that. Then so must we.
What, no Taco Bell?
: Yes, evil Americanism spreads to Baghdad. Burger King and Pizza Hut have opened there. But it was the British who brought them. [via Ryan Pitts]
The atrocities pile up
: Gravediggers outside Baghdad point us to a mass grave for political prisoners holding up to 1,000 victims: He said all the dead that arrived during the last three years he worked at the cemetery were aged between 15 and 30, men and women who had been shot or hanged.
"They were all youths ... the civilians were hanged, sometimes a soldier would come through and they were all shot ... I could distinguish them by their uniforms," he said through an interpreter. They killed their own youth for their opinions.
: And more. Newsweek and the LA Times received documents from Saddam's secret police and in their reporting, this is just one flavor of Saddam's terror: While NEWSWEEK’s Melinda Liu was analyzing the IIS documents in Baghdad, Rod Nordland was piecing together another part of the Saddam story from both Baath Party documents and interviews in the southern city of Basra. One former prisoner he talked to, Anwar Abdul Razak, remembers when a surgeon kissed him on each cheek, said he was sorry and cut his ears off. Razak, then 21 years old, had been swept up during one of Saddam Hussein’s periodic crackdowns on deserters from the Army. Razak says he was innocently on leave at the time, but no matter; he had been seized by some Baath Party members who earned bounties for catching Army deserters. At Basra Hospital, Razak’s ears were sliced off without painkillers. He said he was thrown into jail with 750 men, all with bloody stumps where their ears had been. “They called us Abu [Arabic for father] Earless,” recalls Razak, whose fiancee left him because of his disfigurement.
No one is sure how many men were mutilated during that particular spasm of terror, but from May 17 to 19, 1994, all the available surgeons worked shifts at all of Basra’s major hospitals, lopping off ears. (One doctor who refused was shot.) Today, Dr. Jinan al-Sabagh, an administrator at Basra Teaching Hospital, insists that the victims numbered only “70 or 80,” but he’d prefer not to talk about it.
Calling PETA
: Starving lions in the Baghdad zoo claw their way out; go after U.S. soldiers (does this count as a protest?); they're shot.
Terror
: Two men are arrested videotaping the Ambassador Bridge in Detroit and are found to have dynamite and shotgun shells in their car.
The first question you want to ask isn't answered in many of the stories I found; it is in this one: Yes, they are Arab-American. Sadly, it matters.
Today
: I'm pulling a Reynolds (aka taking a day off); will be back on this afternoon.
April 20, 2003
Iranian weblogger arrested: Editor: Myself, a weblog about things Iranian, reports: Sina Motallebi, well-known blogger and journalist was arrested this morning. He is accused of threatening the national security by giving interviews to Persian language radios outside Iran, wrtiting articles both in newspapers and his weblog.
His weblog, WebGard (i.e. web surfer), was among the top 5 Persian most popular weblogs while his wife, Farnaz, has her own weblog, mostly writing about their newly-born baby boy, Mani.
Sina used to write film reviews for Iranian film magazines in the begining of his career, then joined the reformist paper of Jameah and continued to work with reformist papers. He was the political news editor in Ham-Mihan newspaper which only lasted a few months.
His father, Saeed Motallebi, who is a respected and experienced screenwriter, has been unofficially banned from working after the revolution because of his films in pre-revolution years.
NOTE: Spreading the word may help him to be released earlier. help spread the news! You heard the man: Spread the news.
: Update: Here is Motallebi in a 2002 Guardian story about underground culture in Iran. Sina Motallebi, who writes for the newspaper Hayat-i No, also has a weblog where he makes political comments. These are often censored by the newspaper's editors, who don't want to overstep an ill-defined political boundary and find themselves shut down, the fate of many papers over the past few years. Motallebi says, "There is a lack of freedom of speech in Iran, so weblogs are a good opportunity, especially for younger people, to explain their views and attitudes, because they can't explain them in any other media. They are a good way to exchange news, so they are a way to freedom and democracy, but it's still very young, less than a year old." : As people use weblogs to exercise their God-given right to freedom of expression and as they get in trouble for this, it is our responsibility as fellow webloggers to help however we can.
To the working journalists among us: Looks like a damned good story to me.
To everyone else: Glenn Reynolds suggests contacting the Iranian government about this. An email address: iran@un.int
Correct me if I'm wrong, but I do believe this is the first time a weblogger has been arrested for weblogging. To the barricades, people!
: Feel free to take the simple banner above and put it on your site, linking it to this.
Standing caveat: This has not been confirmed; it has been reported just on one blog.
: Can any Persian bilingual bloggers (and there are many of them) translate some of what Motallebi has written for the rest of us?
: Update: In my comments is a link to a story that confirms the arrest [Thank you, Nima]: Sina Motallebi was taken to jail after he responded to a summons Saturday to report to a police station for interrogation, Farnaz Ghazizadeh told The Associated Press. She said police promised to release her husband in two days, but she believed he would be held longer.
``Sina has been summoned by the judiciary several times over the past four months,'' Ghazizadeh said. ``They object to materials in his web site including interviews he gave to foreign media.''
Motallebi runs the Farsi Web site www.rooznegar.com, which he developed after the hard-line judiciary banned the reformist newspaper he wrote for, the daily Hayat-e-Nou, or New Era. The newspaper had published a cartoon showing the late Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, leader of Iran's 1979 revolution, being crushed by a hand. The struggle for freedom in Iran: See also this interview with Daniel Cohn Bendit translated by Maciej Ceglowski.
Cohn Bendit was an anti-Vietnam-war activist in Europe in the '60s; he has been Germany's Green representative on the EU and is now France's. He has opposed U.S. military action in Iraq -- arguing that it is a repetition of the mistake of Vietnam: an attempt to change a nation's politics through military force, a product of Bush Bolshevism -- "It's the conviction that if the world is modelled on American democracy, there will be no more conflict." [A fascinating interview, even if there's much to disagree with.]
But listen to him about Iran: The only society, the only country in that region that is fighting for democracy is Iran. They are trying to emancipate themselves, fighting a dictatorship. Why not help the Iranians in the same way that help was given to the anti-Franco forces in Spain, the opposition in Greece, the oposition in the Soviet bloc countries? If Iranians liberate themselves, we will see two benefits - the overthrow of a dictatorship by a nation is a very contagious example, while a national emancipation in a conflict with religious fundamentalism is a model for the entire Muslim world. So I agree with intervention - just democratic, not military. There is no better democratic intervention than defending freedom of speech, freedom of the press (whether that press is on paper or on this screen you're reading now).
He is alive!
: I don't mean Him. I mean Glenn Reynolds.
Hugging soldiers
: Julie Burchill -- God love 'er -- nails the anti-war movement in Britain for its hypocrisy regarding soldiers: When anti-war/pro-Saddam types had finished trotting out all the dumb clichés to no avail - "It's About Oil!" (yes, among other things, and unless you live in a cave or a windmill and walk everywhere rather than take a car, bus or plane, then shut up, you hypocrite); "We Armed Him!" (not much, the USSR mostly, but even if we did it a bit, then surely it was our responsibility to make up for that by taking him out); "It'll Make Muslims Angry!" (duh! they were angry before) - they always came over all misty-eyed about the troops. "Our Boys! Bring them home! Now!" Yes, what were formerly units of the English Fascist Imperialist Killing Machine, all through the 30-plus years of keeping the Catholics and Protestants from massacring each other in Northern Ireland, who as an occupying army deserved all they got from those brave kiddy-killing Republicans (but anti-abortionists! the IRA, like Reagan, believed that the sanctity of life began at conception and ended at birth), are now suddenly precious flowers of humanity, not one of whom the most hardline of self-loathing Brit-haters can bear to see suffer so much as a flesh wound.
Can you lose a war you don't fight?
: The NY Times has rich and creamy understatement this morning about the defeated anti-war movement trying to figure out what to do next: Leaders in the movement do not like to focus on the notion that they lost. Yes, they failed to stop the war. Yes, the public has overwhelmingly supported President Bush's actions. With a swift United States victory over a brutal dictator and fewer casualties than most experts predicted, it is particularly hard for antiwar organizers to argue that their dire forecasts were right.
The media war
: This war has been a remarkable even for media but the Times has largely missed that story. Today's report on TV is amazing for how much it does not have to say.
April 19, 2003
Here comes the parade
: The Sun is pushing for a parade to honor British heroes from the Iraq war. Prince Chuck likes the idea.
: I'm watching the first parade now: The welcome home the former POWs are getting at the blissful Ft. Bliss.
Will Iraq stay in Opec?
: The Gulf Daily News hopes it will.
Time to decide
: A German site puts up a gateway that makes you decide: A consciousness of culture is the basis for understanding the content of this site. Supporting unjustified aggressions against others is the void of any consciousness.
Please decide:
Yes, I believe in mankind and agree with this. | This opinion is old european bullshit! You can tell which they think is the right answer -- and which I think is the right answer. [via Monolog]
BBC bias: Come on in, the brine's fine
: I haven't joined in the BBC bashing that has become common sport hereabouts -- I find bias watches tedious, unfulfilling, and often the fruit of paranoid imaginations -- but now I think I'll jump into this cesspool thanks to today's BBC compilation of "unanswered questions" -- that is, things that at one time or another were reported but not necessarily definitively, things that if debunked could make the Coalition look bad. For example:
:We said Scuds were launched to Kuwait (which would have violated U.N. rules); then we say they didn't. [But what about the range of that mall missile?]
: We said that Umm Qasr fell on the 21st. But now it's said that fighting continued for two more days. [Well silly us, war does have its surprises, don't it?]
: We heard reports of an uprising in Basra. Those reports haven't been confirmed yet. [Well, shucks, it wasn't exactly as if we had Peter Arnett inside Basra to give us an eyewitness account. It was a frigging war zone behind enemy frigging lines. Of course, we're not going to know exactly what's happening there. Of course, there are going to be reports and every one I heard was couched as such: "reports of..."]
: There was a report of a big tank column coming out of Basra. It was later corrected. [And your point, BBC?...]
: The market bombings are still the subject of much speculation, reporting, and investigation. [You could look at this another way: This still has not been definitively pinned on Coalition forces. And let's say it was a Coalition missile: You really think a market was targeted? Come on, let's hear you say it out loud.]
: There were reports of chemical weapons found. Upon testing, this turned out not to be the case. [Well, as we've heard often, the tests used in the field often give false positives -- so as to play safe for the troops, who need to put on their gas masks just in case, you see -- but further testing brought out the truth, which was duly reported.]
... And so on.
Now wouldn't it be nice to see some of the other reports, assumptions, and speculations that have also been debunked or assertions by the Coalition that have proven true, for example: The quagmire that never did quite quagulate.... The cheering Iraqis who did, in fact, welcome Coalition troops... The discovery of torture chambers, mass graves, imprisoned children.... The sabotaged oil wells... The power that was turned off not by Coalition bombs but, clearly, by Saddam's henchmen -- causing the humanitarian crisis the Red Cross bleats about via the BBC (below>...
... And so on.
If the BBC had attempted to look at all the stories that were reported too quickly and didn't pan out and all the assertions that didn't end up holding water -- no matter whom they made look good or bad -- then I wouldn't be joining in this pool party right now.
But the BBC only went after things that would make the Coalition look bad.
That's called bias. Yup, I can smell it an ocean away.
A way to help the troops
: Thomas Nephew points us to a program that lets us contribute to help the troops call home.
Russians learn greed
: Greedy Russia says at Tass that Iraq has enough money to repay the debt Saddam built. But what else could they do with that money? Build a successful economy and democracy, perhaps? Oh, but remember: Iraq's allies dont' give a damn about Iraq. Russia acknowledges the possibility of debt restructuring -- so this is all negotiation.
: Meanwhile, the Straits Times reports: "Oil-rich Iraq may be one of the world's most indebted developing nations and the billions it owes must be cleared before its shattered economy can recover fully.... While no one is sure just how deep in the red the country is, estimates range up to US$200 billion."
Bad neighbor policy
: Europe is playing games with ending the trade sanctions against Iraq and now, too, are Iraq's neighbors. With friends and neighbors like these...
Eloquence
: Prince Charles praises as "stirring, civilised and humane" a British colonel's eloquent speech that he gave as he went with his troops into battle. Lt. Col. Tim Collins said: "We go to liberate not to conquer. We will not fly our flags in their country...
"Iraq is steeped in history. It is the site of the Garden of Eden, of the Great Flood and the birthplace of Abraham. Tread lightly there....
"...you will have to go a long way to find a more decent, generous and upright people than the Iraqis.
"You will be embarrassed by their hospitality even though they have nothing....
"As for ourselves, let's bring everyone home and leave Iraq a better place for us having been there. Our business now is north."
Kuß und make up
: Gerhard Schroeder backpedals: "I deeply regret there were exaggerated comments -- also from cabinet members of my previous government," Schroeder told Der Spiegel magazine when asked if there were "grounds for self-criticism" for damage he caused to U.S.-German relations.
The declaration was the furthest Schroeder has gone in trying to mend fences with the U.S. Schroeder auf Deutsch -- posted, interestingly, on the German government web site. [via Command Post]
Well, gee, thanks for the reminder
: One of the great "uh, duh" leads I've read in awhile, courtesy of the BBC: The International Red Cross has urged US forces to restore the Iraqi capital's power supply and other basic services as the threat to public health grows daily. As if we haven't thought of that. As if we're not trying to get power and water back.
Somebody send out a search party...
: ...Glenn Reynolds is missing.
The Jersey connection
: I can't remember where I got this link (sorry to the linker) but here's a page that says that's an New Jersey connection not only in Jersey City and Patterson but also online; it says terrorist-related web sites, such as Jihad Online, are hosted in the Garden State.
Keeping the peace
: The other night on 60 Minutes II, I was surprised and impressed watching a military man administering a town in Iraq, meeting with the local leaders, explaining what was happening. He was town hall, the cops, the courts, and the newspaper all wrapped up in a guy with a buzz cut. I thought these guys were just trained to shoot guns. But as was quite clear from watching at least this guy, they are also trained to keep the peace.
And that's the point Gen. Wesley Clark makes in a piece in the Times of London: The best peacekeeper is a good soldier. We have proved this again and again, everywhere from Sinai and Lebanon to the Balkans. And now we are moving to peace operations in Iraq....
Many US and British soldiers now consider peace operations familiar ground. Manning checkpoints, conducting patrols, settling civil disturbances without excessive violence, guarding key facilities, supporting civil and political activities — all thought through, trained and practised. The operations have a rhythm, and a certain boring quality — like war, either boring or incredibly terrifying, except in peace operations there is less of the terror. Usually. But in peacekeeping you get the bonus of helping people and sensing their appreciation....
[The] commanders will be working with local leaders. There will be meetings to arrange humanitarian support, strengthen security and address grievances such as the noise of tanks and helicopters moving at night. All this is pure municipal politics, and the commanders are better at it than you might think. They will be working hard to win hearts and minds. Yes, that's exactly what I saw on 60 Minutes.
But Clark warns that there are those in Iraq but more importantly, those in neighboring countries, who will seek to destabilize this with attacks not just on Coalition forces but on Iraqis as well; the target doesn't matter when destabilization is the goal. And so Clark concludes: But the countervailing powers in the region, countries such as Syria and Iran, have already been warned: they will seek disruption in Iraq at their own peril. And that is one more reason why the best peacekeeper is a good soldier!
The world moves on
: The top stories on Google News have been the disease of the moment, SARS, and the murder of the moment, Laci Peterson's, no longer the war of the moment, in Iraq.
April 18, 2003
Ungrateful louses
: For the first time in years, Muslims in Iraq were able to go to Friday prayers in public.
And did their imams take just a moment to thank Allah, if not the U.S. for this new religious freedom and their escape from tyranny?
Not according to this report. Instead, they railed against both the U.S. occupation -- and democracy.
That, of course, is because these religious dictators would like to take over. Fartusi urged the faithful to follow the dictates of the Shiite "Hawza," the council of senior clergymen, and spelled out a code of conduct including a ban on music, mandatory veils for women and the primacy of Islamic over tribal law.
The cleric at one of Shiite Islam's holiest shrines in the city of Karbala south-west of here was more explicit in denouncing the presence of US troops he called "unbelievers." It is time for us infidel Westerners -- religious leaders and the leaders of the U.N., France, Germany, and all their fellow travelers -- to demand democracy for Iraq, to make it clear that we cannot trade a secular dictatorship for a religious dictatorship.
North Korean defections
: The Australian reports that up to 20 high-ranking Korean officials and scientists -- including the "father" of the North Korean nuclear program -- have defected to the U.S. with the help of 11 countries, some nongovernmental organizations, and private citizens of South Korea. Among those now believed to be in a safe house in the West is the father of North Korea's nuclear program, Kyong Won-ha, who left his homeland late last year with the help of Spanish officials. Debriefings of Mr Kyong are said to have given intelligence officials an unprecedented insight into North Korea's nuclear capabilities, particularly at the feared reactor number one in the southern city of Yongbyon.
The operation -- dubbed Weasel -- has been largely facilitated through non-government organisations and private citizens from South Korea, the US and its allies. It has deliberately been kept at arm's length from any government. Iraq defeated. Syria cooperating. North Korea compromised and weakening.
We're getting there.
First antiquities, now animals
: I'm waiting for someone to scream that we should have guarded the zoo.
Meanwhile, in Germany
: A few updates from the Frankfurter Algemeine Zeitung:
: Germany and France stonewall the issue of forgiving Iraq's debts -- hiding, as has become their new habit, behind the U.N., as if they are not soverign nations capable of making their own damned humanitarian decisions. Paul Wolfowitz, the deputy defense secretary of the United States, has asked Germany, France and Russia to forgive debt to Iraq totaling around EUR20 billion ($21.8 billion), of which it owes Germany EUR4 billion. But the German chancellery remained tight-lipped, saying only that the United Nations was in charge of forgiving debt. :Meanwhile, Joschka Fischer, the German Green foreign minister who is apparently up for the new position of EU foreign minister, got into an diplomatic tussle with Wolfowitz: [Wolfowitz] accused Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer of twisting the contents of an exchange between the two men in Washington just days after the collapse of the World Trade Center in September 2001.
Fischer told Der Spiegel magazine: “He [Paul Wolfowitz] was of the opinion that the United States must free a whole series of countries from their terrorist regimes, if necessary by force.“ Wolfowitz denied this in a letter to Der Spiegel and said, “I am disappointed that the German foreign minister has discussed the contents of a private meeting in public. But I'm even more disappointed that he inaccurately summarized what was said.“ Fischer's spokesman, Walter Lindner, said the minister saw no reason to revoke what he had told Spiegel.
Caveat john
: German brothels may have to post price lists. I await similar EU regulation.
Irony of the 'war for oil:' fuel efficiency
: The military is taking a liking to hybrid engines that store energy as electricity to reduce fuel use. That's an obvious need when you need to truck supplies up a 300-mile supply chain. The Army's goal is a 75 percent increase in fuel efficiency. [via Die Zeit]
Baghdad Broadcasting Company
: I've been pushing for a Baghdad blog newspaper and for wi-fi'ing the country to get a free press jumpstarted in a nation that has not known freedom.
Now NZ Bear adds an good wish: a 24-hour news channel from Baghdad: I know, I know, television is soooo old media -- but teevee is where we're losing the meme war to the Islamists and Arab nationalists who want to paint America as Evil Oppressor.
Note the approach: I don't favor shutting down Al Jazeera. I do favor countering its messages with the perspective of an Arab people recently liberated by American military power. It is my hope their perspective will be a positive one towards the U.S. --- but that's up to them. Agreed. It is time for media people to pitch in where possible.
A price on Saddam's (other) head
: Somebody wants Saddam's head -- the metal one with the hole in it and all the footprints. [via Ken Sands]
Google bias?
: I'm not ready to accuse Google News of bias but I'm just asking. I've seen a few headlines up top from odd sources. Right now it's: Senior Baath Party official captured;
Thousands of Iraqis demand US forces to leave from Albawaba Middle East News.
What's interesting about this is that unlike the mortally boring J-school and blog discussions about whether and how the NY Times or FoxNews or the Guardian are biased, in this case, you can dig into the Google News algorithm and find out precisely what the bias is. Computers don't lie.
Google should open up its new algorithms to public scrutiny.
Where have all the flower children gone, long time passing?
: George McGovern is still living in his past. He writes a long screed in The Nation going after George Bush and his war: That terrible American blunder, in which 58,000 of our bravest young men died, and many times that number were crippled physically or psychologically, also cost the lives of some 2 million Vietnamese as well as a similar number of Cambodians and Laotians, in addition to laying waste most of Indochina--its villages, fields, trees and waterways; its schools, churches, markets and hospitals.
I had thought after that horrible tragedy--sold to the American people by our policy-makers as a mission of freedom and mercy--that we never again would carry out a needless, ill-conceived invasion of another country that had done us no harm and posed no threat to our security. I was wrong in that assumption. George McGovern was always a naive politician. I supported him when he ran for president because I opposed that war. But he never could see forest.
In this piece, he goes after many topics. He said we should have supported Ho Chi Minh in Vietnam (oh, that'll bring down a storm of POW/MIA flags on you, old fella). He complains about Bush's too-big tax cut (I agree with him there -- and so does most of Congress; the only question now is the number). He says that this war and "other costly wars now being planned in secret" are fattening the military-industrial complex (just saying that takes me back to the '70s; where's my tie-dye?). He argues strenuously that God is not our copilot in war (fine).
But it's what McGovern does not say that's shocking -- and emblematic of the problem of liberalism.
There is not one word in sympathy, compassion, and support for the people of Iraq. Nothing about the tyranny that ruled them. Nothing about their murders at Saddam's hands. Nothing about their suffering. Nothing about their freedom.
Even if you are simply against war (that pacifist cloak does not cover McGovern; he talks about his time as a bomber pilot in World War II), you still have to deal with the human problem of Iraq; you still have to recognize the oppression; you still have to look for solutions. My fellow liberals are, lamentably, not doing that.
So what still makes them liberals? [via The Christian Science Monitor blog]
April 17, 2003
So who's buying those antiquities?
: As I drove home tonight listening to the BBC World Service on the radio, someone from the British Museum said that some of the antiquities stolen from the looted museums of Baghdad are already showing up... where?... in Paris. He said Paris is the headquarters of this trade. He also made clear that much of what is being portrayed as mob looting is, instead, an organized theft ring with a market.
So the fault for the looting of the museums rests in great measure in the laps of those who are criticizing us for not stopping it: with the French.
If the French had agreed to join in the war, perhaps they could have guarded the museums. But we were busy. We were protecting people.
Maybe we didn't stop the looting of the museums.
But we also didn't cause it.
Did the European antique trade? Did the French?
Crossing over
: Tim Porter's fine media blog points us to a Boston Herald story by Jules Crittenden, a reporter who confesses that in the heat of battle, he crossed over from reporter-think to soldier-soul: Down the broad avenue, the column halted in front of a Versailles-like palace, topped with four gargantuan and very bizarre busts of Saddam in an arabesque war helmet that caught our attention briefly, but the fire coming from the ditches under roadside hedges distracted us.
It was here I went over to the dark side. I spotted the silhouettes of several Iraqi soldiers looking at us from the shadows 20 feet to our left. I shouted, ``There's three of the (expletive) right there.''
``Where are the (expletive)?'' Howison said, spinning around in his hatch.
``The (expletive) are right there,'' I said, pointing.
``There?'' he said, opening up with the 50. I saw one man's body splatter as the large caliber bullets ripped it up. The man behind him appeared to be rising, and was cut down by repeated bursts.
``There's another (expletive) over there,'' I told Howison. The two soldiers in the crew hatch with me started firing their rifles, but I think Howison was the one who got him, firing through the metal plate the soldier was hiding behind.
Some in our profession might think as a reporter and non-combatant, I was there only to observe. Now that I have assisted in the deaths of three human beings in the war I was sent to cover, I'm sure there are some people who will question my ethics, my objectivity, etc. I'll keep the argument short. Screw them, they weren't there. But they are welcome to join me next time if they care to test their professionalism. Right on.
Even the Boston Phoenix doesn't criticize him: Crittenden’s pre-emptive defensiveness notwithstanding, you’d have to search high and low to find anyone willing to criticize him for what he did. He found himself in a life-and-death situation, and he acted in self-defense. However, somebody in a journalism suck-thumb-tank gets PC on him: Kelly McBride, who’s on the ethics faculty at the Poynter Institute, says that Crittenden acted in self-defense. But she says she was troubled by the " tone " of his article, describing it as "revealing his bias" toward the American soldiers with whom he was embedded. Hey, lady, you have a problem with honesty? You want him to clean up his tone or you want him to tell the truth? You want him to snooze like CNN or be blunt like Fox? Look at the ratings. Look at what the audience is watching. Honesty wins. Bias? You bet! He was biased toward the guys who were defending him rather than the guys who were trying to f'ing shoot him to death. Bias? Yes. Honest? Yes. Dip your thump in that and suck on it.
Sprechen Sie blog?
: On IT&W;, one of my favorite German blogs, I now see that blog is a verb. Which means, of course, that the present perfect is hat gebloggt.
I enjoyed that.
Madonna, diluted
: So Madonna edited herself and put out a video of American Life without tossing grenades on to the President's lap. I just watched it on AOL.
So she wimped out. She sold out. She wasn't true to her art. If she really cared about her message, if she really believed it, wouldn't she go ahead and deliver it and tell the world to f' off?
No, instead, she cut out the offending images and chose to whine and complain (see post below) about how she was muzzled.
Muzzled, hell. She was greedy. She didn't want to hurt her CD sales. She didn't want to do a Dixie Chick.
So we get a video just as boring as the song. But here's the good news for Madonna: More close-ups!
The cards
: Rumsfeld held a town hall meeting for DOD employees and the first question was from someone who wanted a set of Iraq Bad Guy Playing Cards. "I hear they're on eBay," Rumsfeld said. They are. Latest bid: $61.
Fellow lamenter for liberalism
: When I wrote my Lament for Liberals, I quoted from a Guardian excerpt of piece by John Lloyd, who resigned as a columnist on the New Statesman and explained why. The entire piece wasn't online but blogger Harry Hatchett contacted Lloyd and asked for permission and, thus, here it is. It brings the argument about the left and war down to one clear equation: Human rights trumps national sovereignty. [via reader Jeff Blehar]
Bad boys toys
: Gizmodo finds the local angle -- that is, the gadget angle -- to war with an Independent story on the discovery of Saddam's spy toys: A bizarre weapons cache discovered in Baghdad, including briefcases fitted with sub-machine-guns, air pistols loaded with cyanide pellets and a bomb concealed inside a bottle of pills, has shed light on how Iraq's former regime disposed of its opponents.
Most of the James Bond-style weaponry was found in a house in a Baath party enclave near the Republican Palace. US commandos acting on a tip found other hidden bombs, one inside an umbrella and another in a phone.
The house also had a chemical laboratory and documents which, American troops said, were instructions on making chemical and biological weapons.
Once Nick, Meg, Jason, Dave, et al left, the stampede began
: San Francisco and Santa Clara counties lost more population last year than anyplace else in America.
Iraq: unwired
: Some suggest that Iraq should be equipped with wi-fi Internet access, saving the cost of building a new wired network and speeding the installation. Iraq could become the most technologically advanced nation, leapfrogging the rest. More important, this would bring connectivity and communication -- and thus the free flow of information -- to Iraqis.
I'm ready to help start the Baghdad weblog newspaper. [via Command Post]
Tortured Russian logic tortures Iraqis
: Below, we note that the Euros don't want to lift sanctions because that means they and the U.N. will lose control.
Russia is playing the game with even more tortured logic: RUSSIA will not support a US proposal to lift UN sanctions on Iraq if UN inspectors do not confirm the country has no weapons of mass destruction, a Russian foreign ministry official said.
"Regime change in Baghdad is not a condition for lifting economic sanctions on Iraq," the official told the Interfax news agency on condition of anonymity.
"There is a UN Security Council resolution for this, which clearly stipulates the disarmament of Iraq - something international inspectors must decide," he said, adding that Russia supported the return of UN inspectors. They should be ashamed.
Boootiful
: The Command Post shakes off all that war dust and redecorates.
The liberal corner into which they are painted
: David Carr's fine piece in the NY Times yesterday sets out the liberal war quandry: This has been a tough war for commentators on the American left. To hope for defeat meant cheering for Saddam Hussein. To hope for victory meant cheering for President Bush.
The toppling of Mr. Hussein, or at least a statue of him, has made their arguments even harder to defend. Liberal writers for ideologically driven magazines like The Nation and for less overtly political ones like The New Yorker did not predict a defeat, but the terrible consequences many warned of have not happened.
Now liberal commentators must address the victory at hand and confront an ascendant conservative juggernaut that asserts United States might can set the world right. Yes, as I've said (in my Lament for Liberals), the my fellow liberals need to get back to their roots and set their own priorities right:
The left is for human rights. That means freeing the Iraqi people.
The left is for helping the poor and downtrodden. That means aggressively supporting help for the rebuilding of Iraq and the building of democracy and free speech there.
The left is against isolationism and selfishness. That means supporting the war in Iraq as a means of freeing its people. Nevermind WMD; that is the conservative cause, the hawk's crusade.
The left's reason for this war is people, not weapons.
Just watch Tony Blair. Say what he says. You'll get the hang of it.
The best of Saddam
: The Onion's joke about Saddam's pre-recorded speeches makes me wonder whether we will find a cache of them with optimistic dates: Air on April 17... Air on May 1...
Madonna: This war is about me
: Madonna joins the Tim Robbins/Janeane Garofalo self-centered celebrity club as she whines about criticism she got for producing (and then pulling) a video showing her throwing a grenade into the president's lap: "You know, it's ironic we're fighting for democracy in Iraq because we ultimately aren't celebrating democracy here.
"Because anybody who has anything to say against the war or against the President is punished and that's not democracy, it's people being intolerant.
"Everyone is entitled to their opinion, for or against and that's what our constitutional rights are supposed to be - that we all have the freedom to express ourselves..." Oh, you had the right to release the video. And your fans had the right to become your former fans. That's democracy. Taht's capitalism. That's showbiz.
Comical Ali dolls
: NEW! The talking Comical Ali doll. Just $35.95. Order now. Operators standing buy. Realistic. Lifelike (though Ali himself isn't anymore, some reports say). He says: "There are no American infidels in Baghdad. Never!"
"Our initial assessment is that they will all die"
"No I am not scared and neither should you be!"
"We have given them a sour taste" [via Sky]
Atrocities
: A mass grave believed to be filled with Kurdish victims of Saddam's ethnic cleansing is found. Still think we shouldn't have ousted this guy?
Control v. compassion
: I'm disgusted that the Euros are going to make ending sanctions to Iraq an issue. ``This issue could prove very divisive right now,'' one EU diplomat observed. ``If you lift sanctions you lift the control of the United Nations in what is going on in Iraq.'' This nation needs trade to employ its people and build its assets and simply to eat. But the Euros have never had the best interests of the Iraqi people at heart; they did not care about their freedom from tyranny and now they do not care about their poverty. They care about their control.
: And they're still more concerned about artifacts than people.
Hide 'n' seek
: The Times of London says that if Saddam's sighted in Syria, our forces would go in for a "snatch-and-shoot" operation to get him.
Religions at war and peace
: Are Christianity and Islam essentially anti-Semitic? No, of course not. But they have both rejected much of Judaism, too much to fully disavow that provocative statement. Of course, there is tension and hostility between Jews and Muslims. And these days, I am disturbed to see some of the religious left and Christian Europe turn against Israel.
If all three religions spring from the same fountain, from the same first contact with God, through Abraham (in what is now Iraq, by the way), then why don't they share more traditions and rituals and holy days? Why, for example, don't Christians and Muslims still celebrate Passover with Jews?
Well, Muslims do celebrate Passover in their way, says a Muslim columnist on Beliefnet: Many may not know this, but Muslims also commemorate the Exodus of the Hebrews out of Egypt by fasting the ninth and 10th day of the first month of the Islamic lunar calendar. The event is called Ashura, stemming from the Arabic word for "ten."
While this may be surprising to non-Muslims, it's important to understand that Moses figures prominently in Muslim belief. The Exodus story is a happy one for Muslims; it is a tale of bitter bondage and hardship and the glory of God's deliverance from that hardship....
Yet, as I think about Passover and Ashura, I lament. I lament the tension that exists between the American Muslim and Jewish communities. And not just in America. And not just Muslims and Jews but Christians and Jews and Muslims and Christians. It is a tense triangle.
If the tensions spring from religion, so must the solutions. When I think about it, I'm shocked that I don't see more of those solutions coming from religious leaders, of all people -- other than the calls for peace and seminars here and there. But then, I'm naive if I think that there isn't some truth in the question that begins this post.
So what do we do about it? I think we should start with rituals that take us all back to our common roots. It is a small beginning but it is a beginning that we need.
Why don't we celebrate Passover -- even just share a seder -- all of us, Jews, Christians, Muslims? Why don't we celebrate the freedom of Jews and rejoice for them? Why don't we all call ourselves God's people, freed from bondage, and celebrate freedom together?
When I preached at my small church a year after 9.11 -- on the Jahrzeit -- I ended by saying Kaddish and it felt very right. So why don't we all pray this Jewish prayer of peace for our dead?
Even these small things, these symbolic acts, would tie us together, would remind us of our common ancestry, our common connection to God. They would start to make the other religions less alien to us. If religion does not create such shared actions to remind us of our shared belief and shared humanity, then religion will continue to be the reason that we fight. And that, clearly, is not God's plan.
: And now I see Megnut pointing to ChristianSeder.com
April 16, 2003
SARS sacraments
: The Catholic church in Toronto is changing procedures for Easter communion because of SARS: Catholics taking communion will not be given sacramental wine from a shared chalice, and communion wafers will be placed in the parishioner's hand, not on their tongue. Worshippers are asked to bow to each other rather than shake hands during the "salutation of peace," and to bow or cross themselves before the crucifix on Good Friday, instead of the traditional practice of kissing it. [via Relapsed Catholic]
They ain't singing Blowin' in the Wind
: The seven former POWs arrive in Germany. Just watched them get off the jet and onto the bus. Someone takes up the rear carrying a guitar. Where the hell did they get a guitar? And what are they singing? America wants to know!
Dot I Q
: I know I'm trivializing his bigger suggestion about recovering those lost antiquities, but I'm mesmerized with the point Doc makes about .IQ being a great domain. They should start selling it soon. Who wouldn't want a .IQ URL?
Ah-ha
: I finally figured it out. I looked at Donna Wentworth, amazing law blogger, at the Yale blog conference, and couldn't figure out who she looked like. Got it: Laura Dern.
: Dave Winer says Meryl Streep. But I'm sticking with Laura Dern. And I fear Donna Wentworth wishes we'd just stop.
Arti-facts
: David Galbraith points out the hypocrisy of the outcry over the plundering of museums in Iraq: Curators are outraged by the loss of Iraqi antiquities, but unless they offer up some of their own collections they are hypocrites. Looting during war was the very process by which much of the contents of Western museums was originally obtained. There are two solutions to the loss of antiquities in Iraq: 1. document and try and get back objects as they come on the market; 2. fill the Iraqi museums with objects sitting in the US and UK. Not surprisingly I don't hear anyone at institutions like the British Museum suggesting the latter.
Back-handed help
: Jacques Chirac finally does something helpful: He says the EU will fly Iraqis in need of medical care to Europe for treatment.
I'll try to take Chirac at face value and ignore the possiblity that he's trying to pluck heartstrings with lots of pictures of civilian injuries caused by America and cured by France. I'll ignore that.
But I won't ignore what he calls us even in this context: "the occupying powers." I prefer to call us the liberating powers, Jacques. Or you can call us the winners.
Our wild and crazy poster!
: I've said before that I love my comments. There are lots of good (and a few pissy) discussions going on there; so many, I can't read them all (though I do try).
One of the current joys is a guy calling himself Puce who comes out with doozies that are the product of (a) bad Babelfish, (b) missed medication, or (c) indigestion, for this guy has an obvious obsession with fast food.
I think I should make some of these into T-shirts.
Herewith, the best of Puce: : Baseballs is for not world, USA cowards putting chain on all. No chain, AMERICA
: Geneva Convantion make USA soldier of angry, kill babie and the TV reporter!
: Tobey Keith make boot from cowsboy as in to boot of Hitlers!
: Shut up George Bucher! You are Bush as much in Bush type, stop all war NOW
: Keep away George Bush, can having not American all kill childs and starting Pizza Hutts!
: It as what vasili to saying! Why all of American want Kentacky Fry Chicken in Baghdad? Make statue fallen, is not a way to have!
: No Whooper with freedomfrys! Go away Americans and stop war.
: Eat other an Hamberger, fat Americans GO AWAY! Burp!
A report from Iraq
: A writer from The Atlantic reports from Iraq: Student demonstrations, the traditional street forum of Middle Eastern nationalists, were suppressed by expulsion from schools, by jail sentences, or by bullets. Teachers were forced to report to the secret police on their students, and the reverse was probably also true.... Recently discovered police records indicate that in the city of Baghdad alone nearly 20,000 agents for the secret police kept watch. When one takes into account the Iraqi literacy rate, this means that virtually every educated man had a police double. That was written in 1958, after the coup that put the Ba'athists in power. OK, that's an old and cheap rhetorical trick, the nothing-new-under-the-sun gambit. But that's not my point.
It's important to remember that the Iraqis face a new and democratic future for the first time in their history. It is an advantage that they and we must not squander.
: That story comes from the archives of The Atlantic, which read through all its stories on Iraq since 1958. Good reading.
The 87th stone-skipping weblog story
: Today's Chicago Tribune weblog story about big-media companies and weblogs misses all kinds of action. Yes, of course, there's my company with lots of weblogs, including my warlog. There's the Christian Science Monitor, USA Today, the Spokesman-Review, the Ventura County Star, the Guardian, and more. And there are more coming. Big, old, dumb media isn't as dumb as it used to be.
Yahoo!
: Well, I'm happy to see that I'm listed on Yahoo's new weblogs category.
Don't know how they came up with their "most popular" list -- no Instapundit, no Andrew Sullivan, no Josh Marshall (all of whom have more traffic than many of those listed). [via Thomas N. Burg]
He's no damned Dixie chick!
: What a great scene on TV right now: Donald Rumseld introducing Daryl Worley for a concert at the Pentagon. That's because Worley wrote the song of this war, Have You Forgotten?. You can find the lyrics at this fan site: I hear people saying we don't need this war
I say there's some things worth fighting for
What about our freedom and this piece of ground
We didn't get to keep 'em by backing down
Now they say we don't realize the mess we're getting in
Before you start your preaching let me ask you this my friend
Have you forgotten how it felt that day?
To see your homeland under fire
And her people blown away
Have you forgotten when those towers fell?
We had neighbors still inside going thru a living hell
And you say we shouldn't worry 'bout bin Laden
Have you forgotten?
Utterly clueless
: The Utterly Clueless Tony Perkins hires a flack to get him links for his Always-On thing.
They made the mistake of approaching Elizabeth Spiers of Gawker. She dealt with them with the deftness of a fish knife on salmon: "...it seems a bit like having your mom run around the playground, asking all the other kids to be your friend."
Uh, Tony, I'll try to explain this to you: People will link to you IF YOU HAVE SOMETHING WORTHWHILE TO SAY. That's how this weblog thing works; in fact, that is what makes it work: quality rises because it deserves to. The rest is merely ignored.
Peace movement?
: At Spiked, Jennie Bristow scolds the peace movement for disappearing. Or is it? Just two months after its celebrated birth, the anti-war movement seems to have melted away....
However you choose to play the numbers game [on declining protest attendance], these protests clearly did not represent a movement of people committed to a cause. They can better be understood as a series of gesture politics - go there, see it, do it, wear the t-shirt and go home, secure in the knowledge that you have made your point....
By 12 April, the UK's national demonstrations were looking less like the anti-war protests against the Vietnam War than the funeral of Princess Diana....
Whatever happened to the anti-war movement? It said 'Not in my name', and it got what it asked for: a shoulder-shrugging detachment from politics, and the forward march of the culture of fear.
This is the same writer I linked to who found unfavorable comparisons between the '60s peace movement and this one.
The Iraq-Palestinian axis
: Well, we captured a Palestinian terrorist in Iraq.
We found a Palestinian terrorist training camp in Iraq.
And now we find the editor of Palestine Chronicle wailing mournfully about the fall of Iraq as a "catastrophe" and whining mournfully that Arab nations helped it happen. For a growing population of Arabs who are pushing for a better a future, a more dignified one; seeking a ray of hope, a glimpse of change, the falling of Baghdad can never be described as anything but a catastrophe.
Just weeks ago, Arabs were fighting to liberate one country, Palestine. Now, they have to liberate two, maybe more. Feeling a little lonely, fella?
Today's Saddam joke
: From Netzeitung's blog: Saddam's eight body doubles were gathered in one of the bunkers in downtown Baghdad. Tariq Aziz, the Deputy Prime Minister walks in and says, «I have good news, and bad news.» «The good news is that Saddam is still alive, so you all still have jobs.» One of the doubles spoke up and said, «what's the bad news?» Tariq Aziz says: «He lost an arm»
Somebody's hiring writers!
: That's the good news.
The bad news: It's Al-Jazeera.
: Jim Treacher has a few tips for job applicants.
Terrorist school
: Greg Palkot on FoxNews emphasized this morning that not only was Palestinian terrorist Abu Abbas captured but troops also found a terrorist training camp where Palestinians were taught to become -- as al-Jazeera calls them and as I say we should call them -- human bombs.
Tim Robbins' chill wind
: Tim Robbins spoke to the National Press Club yesterday and said: In the 19 months since 9-11, we have seen our democracy compromised by fear and hatred. Basic inalienable rights, due process, the sanctity of the home have been quickly compromised in a climate of fear. A unified American public has grown bitterly divided, and a world population that had profound sympathy and support for us has grown contemptuous and distrustful, viewing us as we once viewed the Soviet Union, as a rogue state....
A chill wind is blowing in this nation. A message is being sent through the White House and its allies in talk radio and Clear Channel and Cooperstown. If you oppose this administration, there can and will be ramifications. Well, Robbins' appearance at a Bull Durham event in Cooperstown was canceled and I say that was stupid. I hate it whenever anyone tries to muzzle anyone else; it's not democratic; it's not American; it's chicken. So, fine, one wimp did something stupid.
Robbins takes this and other fights and slights and argues that America is falling apart. He, too, goes too far. Free speech and our Constitution are hardly at peril.
It's an argument, Tim. It's a loud, spirited, and sometimes stupid argument. When you're public and you're choosing to be controversial you should expect people to argue. That's just what makes us great.
Oddly, the only place I can find the transcript is at the right-wing WorldNetDaily (because they love making fun of Robbins). In it, Robbins also lamented: : Where have all the Democrats gone? Long time passing, long time ago. (Applause.) With apologies to Robert Byrd, I have to say it is pretty embarrassing to live in a country where a five-foot-one comedian has more guts than most politicians. Janeane? Guts? Not from what I've seen. She gets opposition and ends up whining just like you, Tim. And by doing so, you try to make yourselves the issue -- rather than keeping your real issue front-and-center. You act just like what you are: self-centered celebrities.
It's not about you, Tim.
Over his dead body
: The Palestinian Authority is trying to say that Abu Abbas, the worm who managed the hijacking of the Achille Lauro and the murder of Leon Klinghofer, cannot be tried because of a Palestinian-Israeli agreement that wiped out crimes committed before the Oslo Peace Accord.
But he has already been tried in Italy and sentenced to life in prison. Now it's time for him to serve.
Damnit. [via Command Post]
You know the war's over when...
: Media sites start taking down their "War in Iraq" banners. The BBC's now says: "After Saddam."
April 15, 2003
Saddam's last will and terrorist testament
: Banking officials fear Saddam's missing billions will go to terrorism: US investigators are scrambling to track down the missing money, estimated at between $5bn and $40bn (£3.2m and £25.bn), but some financial experts believe much of it has gone for good, and may have slipped into the hands of extremist groups such as al-Qaida.
Conspiracy theories for everything
: Aaron Bailey (who has been wise enough to stick to his knitting rather than get obsessed by this war thing) forwards a link to a huh-inducing piece of paranoia from Pacific News Service that argues that we didn't win Iraq; it was handed to us: "Arabic media are speculating that a 'safqa' -- Arabic for a secret deal -- was arranged between the United States and the Baath regime to hand over Baghdad."
If that were the case, we would not have lost as many lives as we did or dropped as many bombs. This is just a perverted bit of thinking to argue that we didn't win, they didn't lose, and conspiracies run the world.
Clinton's criticism
: I'm a fan of Bill Clinton's (save your barbs; whatever they are, they're obvious and overused) but I have to wonder what he is smoking these days. He spoke to the Conference Board: FORMER US president Bill Clinton today blasted US foreign policy adopted in the wake of the September 11 attacks, arguing the United States cannot kill, jail or occupy all of its adversaries.
"Our paradigm now seems to be: something terrible happened to us on September 11, and that gives us the right to interpret all future events in a way that everyone else in the world must agree with us," said Clinton, who spoke at a seminar of governance organised by Conference Board.
"And if they don't, they can go straight to hell." ...
He said he believed Washington overreacted to German and French opposition to US plans for military action against Iraq and suggested that the current administration had trouble juggling foreign and domestic issues.
"Since September 11, it looks like we can't hold two guns at the same time," Clinton said. "If you fight terrorism, you can't make America a better place to be." Say what? It's not as if this is our choice, Bill. We're playing the hand we're dealt.
No uncomplicated sex, please, we're British
: The British have passed a sex law. Public sex was going to be outlawed, but it isn't (who do they think they are, French?). The proposed legislation sweeps away offences such as buggery, gross indecency and soliciting by men. Ministers have conceded that men having sex in a public lavatory - "cottaging" - could have avoided prosecution if they were in a cubicle with the door closed....
Private homes were to be exempt from the new law, but having sex in a private garden which could be seen from the street, would have been a crime.
Ridding the world of evil, one slimy worm at a time
: GREAT news: We have captured the terrorist slime -- the worm shit, the cockroach piss, the devil's scab -- who ran the 1985 hijacking of a cruise ship and the murder of an innocent man in a wheelchair.
And where did this happen? Iraq.
And how did this happen: Because we fought a war and won there. And because we scared Syria into closing its border. And because the worm was trying to crawl over that border.
Fringe benefit, if I've ever seen one. Abu Abbas, the Palestinian terrorist who masterminded the 1985 hijacking of the Italian cruise ship Achille Lauro in the Mediterranean Sea, has been arrested by U.S. personnel in Iraq.
Abbas was arrested about 50 miles west of Baghdad after being turned away from Iraq's border with Syria, a Palestinian source told CNN.
The hijacking of the ship led to the killing of disabled passenger Leon Klinghoffer, an American Jew. Klinghoffer was shot in his wheelchair and thrown overboard by Abbas' men. We do not forget.
Mon ami again?
: The Voice of America is trying to spin that France is beginning to regret its behavior: But tellingly, Mr. Chirac's approval rating has dropped four percent since March. The percentage of French opposed to the war has also declined. A weekend protest in Paris against American intervention in Iraq was far smaller than previous anti-war marches.
Now that Saddam Hussein's regime has fallen, political analyst Etienne Schweisguth says, many French are not so certain the war was a bad thing.
The boo spin
: Roger Ebert gives an interview to Progressive Radio and the first question is about Michael Moore's performance at the Oscars: EBERT:... I agree with what he said. I don't think Bush was legitimately elected President. But I was very offended as a reporter when Michael came directly back to the pressroom where I was, along with 300 or 400 other reporters, and lectured us, "Now do your job. Don't report it was a divided house. Only five loud people were booing."
Q: It didn't sound like only five people were booing.
EBERT: No, it wasn't five. I was just talking with Sean Welsh at the Wisconsin Film Festival, who directed "Spellbound." He was one of the directors Michael had invited up on stage, and I asked him very carefully about that, and he said, "No, it sounded about 50-50." But Michael immediately went into this spin-control mode. In one interview, he said it sounded like the stagehands were yelling at him, and that the boos started before he had really gotten into his speech, and that they were amplified. And then he said a lot of the boos were people booing the booers. This is like we're in grassy knoll territory now. I think he would have been better off saying, "Well, you know, the Academy wasn't ready for my opinion, and it was pretty divided: About half of the people booed me." Which is what it sounded like to me. Michael Moore is a fictional character.
: Meanwhile, Moore keeps milking this. He spoke about it again in Austin.
Bodies for art
: As a friend of my said, if the biggest hubub coming out of Iraq these days is over a looted musuem, that's good news.
Hey, I'm sorry that antiquities got lifted. I'm sorry Iraqi museums didn't have better locks. I'm sure Tommy Franks is sorry he didn't have an extra tank to park in front of that museum.
But let's check our priorities, people. This is a war. In a war, you're a bit busy worrying about things other than the priorities an NPR audience would set.
Get a load of this question from today's Doha briefing from an AP Radio reporter: I had two questions. One was getting back to the antiquities issue. Asking people to return things now is kind of like shutting the barn door after the horse has bolted. Why did the coalition, when it went to great lengths to protect oil facilities not go to any lengths at all apparently to protect some of the museums in Baghdad that had great antiquities?...
GEN. BROOKS: ...The efforts to secure antiquities. First, as we entered Baghdad, we were involved in very intense combat, and our focus was the combat actions necessary to remove the regime and any of its appendages. In removing the regime, there is a vacuum that is created -- that certainly did occur -- and the vacuum will be filled as time goes on. I don't think that anyone anticipated that the riches of Iraq would be looted by the Iraqi people, and indeed it happened in some places. So while it may now be after the fact that that looting has occurred, it's still important to try to restore it as much as possible. It's simply not useful to speculate as to why we did, did not, what could we have done differently. We did what we did, and our operations were focused on objectives at hand at the time. And we believe that as time goes on we will be able to sort out this issue as well. I'm just waiting for that story on Alternet saying that this proves the war was for oil: We protected oil wells before we protected sculpture! Philistines!
Jeesh. We knew they had a habit of blowing up oil wells. We didn't know they had a habit of looting antiquities.
But let's look at this another way: Pull together the parents of a bunch of Marines and ask them: Is it worth your child's life to protect Iraqi antiquities? That's no smart-assed question (well, it is, but it's also legit) for with a limited number of troops, putting some of them at the museum would have taken them away from protecting people elsewhere. Dead stone heads or live breathing humans? Easy choice.
: Glenn Reynolds says this is all about the U.S. being caught in the "impotence/omnipotence double bind" -- hell if we do, hell if we don't.
Baghdad as Beirut
: Al-Jazeera draws parallels between multisectarian Lebanon and multisectarian Iraq -- first to take pot shots, of course: at Israel for its involvement in Lebanon and at the U.S. for our involvement in Iraq. But once it gets that kneejerk pissyness over with, the story moves on to suggest the ways in which these two lands are or should be alike.
If the Iraqis govern themselves as they truly wish, it's not hard to see them split up into their pre-colonial provinces: Mosul, Baghdad, and Basra roughly for Kurds, Suni, and Shiite. Nick Denton has suggested that should be the case (and I'd link to the post if he, like a normal blogger, had monthly archives so I could go hunting for it). The problem with that, it's said, is that it will destabilize neighboring countries, particularly Turkey with its Kurdish minority. We've said we want to keep Iraq, even with its artificial ethnic lumping, together. The prayer is that the Iraqis can pull that off without Yugo-style war.
How? Al-Jazeera talks to Lebanese leaders: Sayyed Hani Fahes, a Lebanese Shia Imam who was trained in Iraq,
also believes Lebanon is a valuable lesson to the world. Like any spiritual leader, Sayyed Fahes is a firm believer in the essential goodness of humankind. He believes a better kind of regime could emerge from Iraq’s present despair.
Together with other Lebanese Shia leaders, including Hassan Nasrallah, the head of Hezbollah and Sayyed Hussein Fadlallah, one of Lebanon’s highest Shia authorities, Fahes believes that the new government in post-Saddam Iraq could do worse than emulate Lebanon’s own post-war multisectarian system.
Under it, all sects are represented. While the balance is not always maintained, it has resulted in a government that is more national than religious....
“Western countries want to stop jihad, so do we, we want jihad to evolve,” he says. “For the first time, we have something in common, we both want democracy.”
Co-founder of a group dedicated to exploring inter-faith dialogue in Lebanon, Sayyed Fahes has his own take on the American refrain that since September 11th, the world is a different place.
“Sunni, Christian, Jew, East and West, we want to work with them all,” he
says. “The Arabs and the Shia have to be integrated into the world. If
they are kept aside, they will be a big problem. I believe, as we have learned in Lebanon, that our future together will be difficult but it will be possible.” : That last line is, of course, the understatement of the year. Just note today's news from the first meeting to bring Iraq's groups together to start to build their future, reported by CNN and quoted on Command Post: There was a protest earlier today, thousands of people marching through the streets. They were the Shiite Muslims. They were carrying banners saying we want to be included in this process. That is kind of ironic given the fact that the Shiite Muslims are now boycotting this meeting.
Just go to McDonald's; they need the business
: Dissident Frogman gets email: We just learned that my friend's brother was refused service at three restaurants in Paris because he was an American. I just hope we Americans can rise above this pettiness and show the world that we forgive even the rudest of people. Have we not been doing that with them since the beginning of time?
War: Who was it good for?
: The Guardian asks who benefitted from the war. Among the many constituencies: bloggers. News websites have been visited heavily throughout the war, but it's the bloggers - unofficial diarists recording events both grand and insignificant - who have been the real internet winners.
Quoting criticism
: The NY Times today covers the small furor caused by CNN's admission -- on the Times Op-Ed page -- that it withheld revelations on Iraqi brutality in the interest of its own staff and its own coverage of Baghdad. The story quotes professors. If they were wise, they'd quote weblogs -- not just because the weblogs were the first to jump on the story (it happened so fast that I was left out because I was away from my computer for a few hours that day) but also because the weblogs are far more quotable than profs. The story is boring. The blogs were not.
If I ran a paper, I'd have reporters reading weblogs and forums all the time. The closer you get to quoting the people (not the obvious spokesmen and professors and retired thises and thats) the closer you get to getting the real story.
Terrorist cops plea
: James Ujaama, Seattle activist, was accused of aiding the Taliban.
Here's what the Freedom Socialist Party said on his behalf last year: The James Ujaama case is an example of guilt by association, racism in the Justice Department, and the criminalization of skin color, ethnicity and national origin by the Bush administration. Here's what James Ujaama's attorney said yesterday: "He's acknowledged his personal responsibility for the facts that are stated in the plea agreement," Offenbecher said. "He stepped up to the plate and said, 'I did these things and I regret them.' " Further details of what he did: According to yesterday's plea documents, Ujaama traveled to Pakistan in late 2000 to help an unidentified conspirator travel to jihad training camps in Afghanistan. Ujaama also delivered currency, computer software and other items to the Taliban in 2000 and 2001, and helped operate a Web site that solicited support for the Afghan leadership, documents show.
Ujaama initially drew support from a wide range of community leaders in Seattle, where he had been known as a community activist and small-time entrepreneur who was honored with a day of recognition by one state legislator. Traitor.
April 14, 2003
Blog confab
: The Jupiter blog conference in Boston in June is taking shape. It's concentrating on business and technology, not content.
(A disturbing note: They added Tony Perkins of the never-quite AlwaysOn as a keynoter. Yech.)
Humor in the face of adversity
: Stuart Hughes, the BBC producer who lost his foot on a landmine and has been blogging about it, says today: I'd Better Get Well Soon. Looks like the Axis of Evil roadshow could be heading towards Damascus soon. Can't we have a rest from touring? You guys are worse than the Grateful Dead.
Weasels wavering?
: Radio Free Europe (a spin machine, of course) asks whether the Council of Weasels failed: A budding alliance between France, Russia, and Germany seems to have struck a brick wall after having come together over fierce criticism of the U.S.-led war against Baghdad.
Leaders of the three countries failed to issue an expected joint declaration on Iraq after a hastily convened summit in St. Petersburg over the weekend.
Our buddy Blair
: It looked tight and tough for Tony Blair for awhile there, but he stood firmly by us and our President. It was easier for Bush; this was his war; his party was behind him. For Blair, this was Bush's war and his party was not behind him. They held it over him like probation over a two-time offender. He looked exhausted.
But the Times of London says Blair has run the marathon (and still looks like it) ... but he won. TONY BLAIR staggered the last stretch of his war marathon yesterday, a man now running on pure willpower, gaunt, gritted, visibly elated, and profoundly, knee-saggingly knackered....
Hands reached out from all sides to slap his back as he reached the end. Iain Duncan Smith was the first. “He has carried a heavy burden, but he will have been comforted by the conviction that he was doing the right thing.” ...
Through the finishing stretch, Blair seemed strangely disconnected, as if focused somewhere far away, locked in the loneliness of the long-distance runner. But when it was over, he wiped his forehead with a grin of pure satisfaction. Well run, friend.
: The Guardian adds: Blair is clearly back in charge. He may have been damaged by the Iraq war, but the damage is less important than the evidence of his renewed ascendancy....
We now also learn that before Blair departed for the March 18 Iraq debate, Downing Street had drawn up contingency plans for the withdrawal of British troops from the build-up in the Gulf and also for Blair's resignation, should the votes have gone against him. That is how serious it was.
Sex solves everything
: Ken Sands of the Spokesman Review's warblog sends us the greatest story yet about civilizing Iraq: Some people are surrendering the booty they took in the Dura district of Baghdad, perhaps in response to a rumored edict by a Muslim cleric forbidding Iraqi wives from having sex with looter husbands.
Muslim clerics have been demanding that ill-gotten goods be surrendered, though none here could confirm the sex-ban order, said to have been issued in Najaf. One cleric said the rumor of the edict was widespread and that it would be consistent with Islamic teaching.
‘‘A good Muslim woman would not let this man touch her, as a signal to everybody that this is not a way to behave,” said Sheik Ali Jabouri, who also preached Monday morning that people must give up their loot. I'm going to start a rumor that the Pope says the French won't get sex unless they leave the Security Council.
Blog TV
: I got an email I'm sure many of you got announcing an effort to create a pilot for a blog TV show. They're asking for submissions of video. If you're interested, go here.
I sent the creators email trying to find out more about the venture. In their response: We've corresponded with bloggers literally all over the world, just today from India and Holland. We expect to get some talking heads, some travelogue, some arty stuff, some rants. From kids in college to Linux journalists to moms to political pundits to photobloggers. I wish them the best. I think it will be a challenge to bring together a show around the quite diverse world of bloggers: people who type; people who walk; people who talk; people who blog -- they're all have about as much in common.
I have some other thoughts on video and the future of bloggers. Later.
Trump
: See all the Iraq slime playing cards here.
Weasel watch
: I smell France backing off here... but I've smelled that before.
Inside media -- too inside
: The usually savvy Michael Wolff, media columnist for New York Magazine, keeps his 45 seconds of fame in Doha alive in his latest column.
Wolff, you'll recall -- or he'll help you recall -- was the guy who stood up and asked the general why they, the media, were there.
The problem with Wolff's question is that it was not savvy; it was naive, more naive than the audience, I'll guarantee you. We all know that briefings are the official word; they're not documentaries, not journalism, not truth sessions; they're spin. Most of the audience is plenty smart enough to know that; they don't need any columnist to tell them that. So he shouldn't have been surprised that what they got in Doha was the official word, the Pentagon spin. But he wasn't just surprised; he was offended; he felt used by the Pentagon, which wanted an audience for its spin shows (as if that audience, the media, didn't stampede each other to get there and then to get to the front row).
Wolff usually gets media -- brilliantly. But for some reason, he doesn't get this.
Further, I've always known as a reporter that the dullest, worst, most shruggable, most worthless story you can possibly write is a story about the media and their trevails. Nobody could possibly give a damn, nor should they. A real reporter should never file that story but should instead go out and get a real story. But that's what Wolff had to cover as the media columnist embedded in the media camp in Doha. So that's what he filed and keeps filing.
He's keeping it going with this week's column. But even among the overexposed, I was—because of the irritable question I’d asked at a daily briefing and over international television—on the verge of a special status: becoming the wiseass of the war.
A television reporter from Istanbul was hotly pursuing me for an interview because I was, apparently, famous in Turkey (a title for a possible memoir). I was very popular, it seems, in France, Canada, and Italy too.
The AP, Reuters, the Times, and The Nation were calling. What’s more, I’d had to switch from the Doha Marriott to the Doha Ritz-Carlton for a faster Internet connection to download 3,000 hate e-mails....
The question, it turned out, spoke powerfully to people who think this whole thing (not just the news conference but, in some sense, the entire war) is phony, a setup, a fabrication, in which just about everything is in service to unseen purposes and agendas (hence my popularity in Turkey, France, Canada, Italy, and at The Nation magazine, as well as among the reporters in the Doha press pool). But it seemed to speak even more dramatically to people who think the whole thing is real, pure, linear, uncomplicated, elemental (lots of, if not all, Americans). For the former, I’d addressed something like the existential issue of our own purposelessness, but for the latter, I seem to have, heretically, raised the very issue of meaning itself. Jeesh. Deflate, man, deflate. Watch out for any reporter who ever thinks he does something "existential." It's worse when a newsman thinks he is news. You'd think they, of all people, would know the truth: You're a sound bite, boy... and then the sound fades. Repeat after me: It's all just fishwrap tomorrow -- and you're the fish.
That's media.
Weasel watch
: French Foreign Minister Dominique de Villepin goes to Syria and meets with Syria's Foreign Minister, Farouk al-Shara. We tell Syria to watch out and behave; France goes to hug them.
You'll know it's over when...
: Al-Jazeera asks how we'll know when the war is over.
I'd say we'll know when the networks stop calling their regular news shows "special editions" and stop using their war theme music.
Seeing the world though dung-colored glasses
: The Guardian's daily update tries to make it look as if we're losing. Getaloada the headline: Small successes outweighed
Confusion, looting and tension about Syria overshadow the few achievements of this war It's bad when you can fisk a headline.
Well, let's see. We took Tikrit, the last major city in Iraq. Saddam is in control of nothing. I would say that is the mark of victory.
Our POWs were free. Let's say that again: Our POWs were free.
The buses are running again in Baghdad as even al-Jazeera admits that order is returning.
Syria is not answering our scolds with taunts; it is acting like a dog that's under control.
And we have arranged a meeting of Iraqi leaders this week to start creating Iraq's first democratic government.
And all that happened in the last 24 hours. Looks like a pretty damned good day to me.
The good news
: The Washington Post's Peter Baker flew to Kuwait with the freed POWs and so he got their story. "We weren't POWs very long," Young noted. "I don't know how the guys in Vietnam made it. I wouldn't have made it." : The Today show (and probably others) eavesdropped -- no, gawked -- on the first phone call from Spec. Shoshana Johnson to her family. It was unseemly for us all to watch as this brave woman finally reached her family and the tears came out. I want to hear the story and see the drama, too, but a little privacy is the least we can give them.
Smoking kills
: A bouncer was stabbed to death at a New York club when he tried to enforce the city's new smoking ban and stop a patron from lighting up.
April 13, 2003
Through the pain
: The weblog by Stuart Hughes (the BBC producer who lost his foot to an Iraqi landmine) continues to amaze me with its face-value candor: I'd like you all to meet my new friend, Mr Stumpy. He looks a little scary at first but once you get to know him you'll see that he's actually real friendly. He prefers being calls a "residual limb" but I don't go in for all that PC crap. Complete with picture.
But enough about oppressed millions, let's save Janeane!
: Buzzflash finds a cause to get behind: The defense of Janeane Garolfalo's sitcom career, pointing us to a manic "commentary" at Take Back The Media filled with unique stabs at antiwar humor: ...really, how can you be pro-war? You like them babies crispy, mouthbreather? Charming.
This is the Janeane fan club, eh? Or perhaps the Janeane Garofalo Anti-Defamation League. Or perhaps its Janeane Garofalo's agent speaking: Hateful WARBOTS attempt to boycott Janeane's new show!
She's unfairly targeted for being intelligent, witty, well read, informed, and too good looking....
So this means that WE, as intelligent, ALL American lovers of Peace must join forces and come to the aid of Janeane Garofalo. She laid it on the line for all of US and now we must "get her back" on this. Nobody needs to bother to boycott Garofalo; her mediocre career will take care of itself.
And the next time you're going to go looking for a Joan of Arc for your cause, try looking for someone who really is intelligent, witty, well-read, and doesn't fall apart in an argument.
Even al-Jazeera sees progress
: Al-Jazeera reports near normalcy in Baghdad. Consider that: The government is ousted on Wednesday; fights continue even today; and order is already in sight. Anybody want to call that anarchy? After days of pillaging, lawlessness and anarchy a semblance of order appears to be returning to Iraq’s capital Baghdad.
Groups of concerned citizens and professional policemen combined with efforts by the US-led occupation forces have enabled near-normalcy in most parts of the capital. A night curfew on Baghdad imposed by the US-led forces helped stem the looting....
In addition, US Marines patrolled the streets at night, trying to instill calm in the city. "Every night!, Every night!," yelled one man from among a group of figures clustered around a late-night kiosk, imploring marines to do regular dawn-to-dusk patrols....
Meanwhile, traffic snarled in the capital as hundreds of Iraqis lined up in the hopes of securing a job under the US-led forces.
Yes, we should be ashamed we waged this war
: If we had not waged this war, this prison, described in the Independent, would still be in business. Wednesday was the day for killing and Thursday was the day relatives paid to collect the bodies of the dead. How prisoners were executed depended on an order from above – a bullet to the back of the head for those deemed to deserve a degree of mercy and the rope for those destined to suffer.
On the morning of their deaths, prisoners were asked their permission to be killed: those who agreed first received a glass of water and a brief reading of verses from the Koran while those who said no went straight to the hangman's noose.
These were the workings of the notorious Abu Ghurayb prison...
"Millions of people were killed here," said a man in a red T-shirt who was walking around the prison yesterday morning...
...one former army officer who defected to the West said that 2,000 people were killed here in one night alone. But under Saddam's rule, scores and possibly even hundreds of thousands of people may have met their deaths at the regime's most notorious prison. And how many more would die still? [via Command Post]
On other fronts
: The Vatican wants to draw attention to other wars: In early April, the Vatican missionary news agency, Fides, published a 22-page dossier to draw attention to the "silent wars" around the globe. The agency complained that, judging by newspaper headlines and running TV coverage, Iraq was the only war worth reporting -- or worth protesting. Among them Ivory Coast, Liberia, Nigeria, Chechnya, Kashmir, the Philippines, Indonesia, Gaza, and Afghanistan. [via Ibidem]
Weasel Watch: Germany's dangerous game
: The Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung sums up Germany's mischievous behavior:
: "Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer broke a year-long U.S.-Israeli boycott on visiting Yasser Arafat, a move widely seen as a direct challenge to U.S. policy."
: "As for Schröder, he invited French President Jacques Chirac to join him at talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin this weekend, fueling speculation that the two EU countries were seeking a tactical alliance with Moscow...
"That led the opposition Christian Democrats to warn Schröder against forming 'a dangerous axis' between Russia, Germany and France after the war in Iraq is over."
: Schröder puts a condition on German aid to Iraq: "Germany can and will contribute to reconstruction if the UN is in charge," he said.
Cheeky.
Some of the comments in my earlier post on Germany came from people who have spent years defending Germany against prejudice against them in America. I've done exactly that. I studied German in school; I studied the Holocaust in my days as a philosophy major; I ended up with Germany friends, colleagues, and family; I loved visiting the country; I put up with a lot of crap in this country for even tolerating Germany. But I defended the idea that the sins of the fathers are not the sins of the children; I noted our close relationship and all the help we gave Germany and all the progress the country made since; I defended the relationship.
But this is what we get in return right now.
Reality TV
: For the last hour, I've been watching live war on FoxNews: our soldiers going after snipers in Baghdad. We hear the shots coming in; we see our soldiers hovering around their armored vehicle going off in hunt for the snipers; we see the fire returned; we see surrenders of four enemies so far. With embeds and satellites, I thought we might see more of this but in any case, it's amazing -- so far beyond the Vietnam dinnertime show as to be revolutionary. Beats any TV movie of the week (see below).
We interrupt this war for a message from our sponsors
: Jason Calacanis writes to PaidContent.org on the sale of his Venture Reporter (nee Silicon Alley Reporter): That is the big lesson I think.. blog + database + research reports = big business, blog plus nothing = a hobby.
In my mind blogs have killed the newsletter business. You can't be just a newsletter any more because some talented and ambitious fellow who has been laid off will spend $99 to host a blog to kill his former boss. The only protection you have is to build something bigger and better then a blog. Blogs are killing the weak publishers. This speaks only to the trade business. The consumer world is different (and tougher). But let's remember that the data base may not come from a single blog publisher but from an aggregator...
 Where's Bob
: Here's another Baghdad Bob fan site [via the link-rich IT&W;] with more great quotes, such as: "God will roast their stomachs in hell." The guy is the ultimate flack.
(They don't know where this gag came from but the Web is grateful.)
Exploiting the obvious
: NBC has announced that it plans to make a movie about the rescue of Pfc. Jessica Lynch -- whether or not she cooperates and gets paid. CBS is also considering a TV movie.
There are two things wrong with this:
First, of course, if you make the movie without her and don't pay her that is unconscionable exploitation. It is wrong. It is also terrible PR. The audience that loves her for what she represents -- hope, victory, and patriotism -- will hate the network that screws her.
Second, the movie is bound to be awful. Name the last TV movie that was worth a damn..... I'll wait... Time's up... The form of the TV movie, which once produced good work, is all but dead. I used to watch TV movies for a living and I saw the genre die (and miniseries before them) simply because there is now too much competition from cable. TV movies are back to where they started: They are the shlocky leftovers.
So this movie will be bad just because of what it is. But it will be bad for another important reason: It will do nothing but upchuck the news we've already seen -- and seen with greater frequency than we ever used to see such news. We all know this story. Any of us could write the script. My neighbor could play Jessica without a script. The movie will add nothing new, no perspective, no heart. You might as well just play a tape from FoxNews; that will have just as much drama.
Eventually, Pfc. Lynch's story will be told and very well might make a good movie. But not yet, and not under these circumstances.
In the lands of enemies
: Just as war beings, Kurt Andersen of public radio's Studio 360 finds himself on vacation in the lands of our former enemies -- Japan, Vietnam, China -- and he finds that they don't hate us. On the way over, he shifted off the 50/50 fence to slightly in favor of the war. The trip did not change that. The next day, our tour guide, a university graduate called Liep, who made clear his enthusiasm for Vietnam's new free-market economy, also brought up the war -- the war in Iraq. ''I hate Saddam Hussein,'' he volunteered, ''but I worry about Iraqi people being bombed.'' He paused. ''Like here, during the American war.'' I took a breath. I told him that I shared his concern about civilian death and injury and that I was hopeful that precisely targeted bombs would make for less of it. I said that in Vietnam in the 60's and 70's, American policy wasn't driven by self-defense or, in the end, by a concern for the welfare of the Vietnamese and that our policy in Iraq really is. Even as I made the argument, though, my distinction between then and now struck me as slightly lame. Unlike Saddam, I ventured, Ho Chi Minh was authentically devoted to his people, and that devotion was obviously reciprocated. We were passing near the long, long line outside Ho's mausoleum, where the great man's mummified corpse is on display. ''I'll bet if Saddam Hussein's body were put on display in Baghdad, Iraqis wouldn't line up for an hour to pay their respects.'' Liep said nothing, so I ended my ad hoc ''Wars of National Liberation: Vietnam Versus Iraq'' symposium.
"
April 12, 2003
'Sometimes, death comes in unexpected ways'
: Peter Maass (who has been phoning in the occasional report from the front to Nick Denton) files his first report for the NY Times magazine, a brief and utterly harrowing story of death in battle, but not from bullets.
Weasel watch
: The Telegraph says it had made a number of startling finds in documents at Saddam's intelligence HQ:
: Russia provided Saddam with much intelligence, including reports on private conversations between Tony Blair and other leaders.
: Russia provided "lists of assassins available for 'hits' in the West and details of arms deals to neighbouring countries."
: "The name of Osama bin Laden appears in a number of Russian reports. Several give details of his support for the rebels in Chechnya."
Weasels, indeed.
: More: The Guardian says Russia trained Iraqi agents as late as last September.
: The World Bank stalls on aid to Iraq.
: Germany says it won't forgive Iraq's debt.
A lament for liberals
: I'm greatly troubled by my fellow liberals and their opposition to this war.
I'm liberal (and I'll spare you the cliched blogger's definition of what makes me that) and I used to be a pacifist (and I've already used this space to explain why I'm not anymore, after 9.11) and I openly struggled with my decision to support this war.
But I am terribly gratified with the results thus far: I see a tragically suppressed people free at last. Even through the hard work ahead, I see nothing but new possibilities for them (and perhaps even their neighbors).
Liberals in general -- not all of them, of course -- still oppose this war. And I still don't understand it. Liberals are, by definition, the humanitarians among us. Liberals should care about the rights of the Iraqi people. Liberals are not the isolationists (and not always doves). Liberals should be the champions of the rights of the poor, the oppressed, the ignored. Liberals should have shouted in favor of saving Iraq's people, not its leader.
But something has happened to the left, or rather, its vocal leadership. It got hijacked by an orthodoxy of offensiveness -- that is, by political correctness, which cares more about words than actions or people, which stifles freedom of expression rather than protecting it. It got shanghaied by a not-in-my-name selfishness. It got coopted by a haughty condescension. This is not the left-liberal-Democratic movement of the masses; this is the movement of the elite; this is the PBS left. This is not the movement of action but of inaction. This became the movement of no-no-ishness, wagging fingers and tsking tsks at the other side; it became about being against something rather than being for something. I don't know how this happened but I lament that it did.
I'm still a liberal -- all the more so -- even if I like many of my fellow travelers less. The Internet has made me more of a liberal, more of a humanist, because it has made me more of a populist, as I've also said quite often in this space. I believe strongly in giving the people the power to express and govern themselves in a context of civilization; I have faith in their (read: our) taste and intelligence and sense and morality. That extends to the Iraqi people. It extends to any people.
I cannot understand how the left cannot at least rejoice at the freedom of the Iraqis (though I give credit to those who do, like Eric Alterman, who, like a mensch, headlines his latest post "I was wrong"). But in general, they don't. That's a shame. That's a damned tragedy.
I want to take the left back for liberals.
: See also a superb post by Anil Dash today in which he looks at this from another side: lamenting how libertarians and conservatives are only now in favor of intervening on behalf of peoples' rights -- but he hopes they keep it up. I wish Anil would also address the issue, the problem, the quandry of liberals no longer supporting such effort and intervention. (I'll also quibble with his trivializing equivalency of NPR support with Iraqi free speech -- even if it is just a rhetorical convenience.) Nonetheless, he says wise things: I hope they keep saying that our continued safety in the future requires seeing to the freedoms of people around the world.
I hope that involvement becomes our policy. I hope that we go to the Congo. I hope we go around the world, first stopping genocides and massacres and ethnic cleansing, then preventing famines and mass starvation, and finally ensuring each of the other civil liberties we take for granted here in the United States. I really do hope that we stay on an interventionist course when it comes to the liberties of those in the developing world. : See also Richard Bennett today. He quotes John Lloyd's resignation from the New Statesman. Says Lloyd: A large part of the British left - and the left elsewhere - has made a fundamental mistake. In opposing the invasion of Iraq, it has shown itself incapable of thinking through not only the nature of the world as it is today, but also its own claims to be the leading force in making the world better.... Read it all.
And Bennett adds: It's really sad, and I mean that, that the Left has marginalized itself as badly as it has. With so many things going on in America that put civil liberties in jeopardy, we need a zealous and credible watchdog that can hold the Administration's feet to fire, but the Left is more interested in having "Not in my name" rallies than in doing their job. Like I said, it's sad. Yes, as I said, it is time to reclaim the left for liberals.
Teacher, teacher
: Relapsed Catholic sends us to a story at the Catholic Educators' Resource Center about a parent who objects to his school's education on the war: Last week our ten-year-old son was encouraged by his teachers to write a letter to Tony Blair protesting the war in Iraq. I was grateful that the school was instilling an interest in current events and Christian morality, but I wasn't impressed with their attempt to help the children understand both sides of the question.
The underlying assumption seemed to be that the war could only be wrong.
To help him see the other side I asked Benedict what he thought we should do if we had a neighbour who we knew tortured his dog, abused his children and beat his wife. Benedict wasn't sure. 'What if we knew he did all those things, and suspected that he might actually have killed somebody and buried them in his garden.' I asked. 'What if this man was seen out at night stalking young children. Do you think we should call the police and ask them to investigate?' 'Yes,' he answered. 'And if he was guilty should the police take him away and lock him up?' 'Yes,' he answered. 'What if they had to break into his home. What if somebody might get hurt in the process. Should they take the risk?' The answer was 'Yes.' Wise kid. Narrow-minded teacher.
A crock
: Dan to a Gillmor links to a complete crock from Indymedia trying to argue that the the topping of the Saddam statue was staged for the media.
Well, yeah. Like that's news? Ever since the '60s, demonstrations have occurred where the TV cameras are; that is part of the point; that is the power the crowd holds.
If the people hadn't wanted that statue to fall, they wouldn't have joined the crowd. If they didn't want the world to see them celebrating, they wouldn't do it in front of the cameras.
Inymedia's alleged evidence? One guy in the crowd looks an awful lot like a confederate of Ahmed Chalabi's Pentagon-backed Free Iraqi Forces.
So?
That and they link to a Fisk story. Well, now, that's convincing.
Consider the source. Consider it a crock.
: Oh, and that Fisk piece (whose copyright Indymedia violates by just copying it) that complains about the looting and us not stopping it -- and then complains that our forces are searching people. And already America's army of "liberation" is beginning to seem an army of occupation. I watched hundreds of Iraqi civilians queuing to cross a motorway bridge at Daura yesterday morning, each man ordered by US soldiers to raise his shirt and lower his trousers – in front of other civilians, including women – to prove they were not suicide bombers. You can't have it both ways, Bobby: If we don't police the people, we're laggards; if we do police, we're an occupation force.
Crock.
You just don't want to be happy that these people are free, do you?
Shopping
: Welcome to Fatwa Sam's Online Bazaar, offering Saddam statues, fixer-upper bombed-out houses, and camels. [via IT&W;]
Loot
: Roger L. Simon says he'd loot: What's with all this tut-tutting in the media about looters in Iraq? Gimme a break! If you were the citizen of a country where you had to live under the thumb of a sadistic, psychotic, homicidal maniac dictator who had his people murdered, tortured and raped and stole practically every penny they had on top of that for twenty-four years, wouldn't you do a little looting after liberation? Hell, I would. In fact, I'd probably do a lot of looting. I'd probably grab everything I could from those assholes that wasn't tied down by a thousand pound lead weight!
And I wasn't at all surprised to read in John Burns' NYTimes article that two of the most popular places for pillage were the German and French Embassies. Right on!
It's personal
: Stuart Hughes, the BBC journalist who lost his foot in Iraq, has a picture and more entries up today. It's a courageous effort. It seems so strange lying here watching the jubliant masses running amok on the streets of Kirkuk.
Just over a week ago I was crouching on a ridge a few kms away, watching the gas burn-off and the shimmer of the city through binoculars. Now, it looks as though anyone with a four wheel drive and a half decent sense of direction can stroll straight in.
In the past week my life, and those of millions of Iraqis, have changed beyond recognition. But the story I lived and breathed for two months doesn’t seem so important now.
0940
Well yesterday’s entry was a bit self-pitying, wasn’t it?!
Yesterday the enormity of what’s happened and what’s still ahead came crashing down on me like a bronze statue of Saddam Hussein in the middle of Baghdad....
Who vs. whom
: Matthew Perris has a doozy of a column in the Times of London arguing that the world should gang up against the U.S. Yesterday the leaders of Russia, Germany and France met in St Petersburg to talk about the future. They carried with them worries about America shared by many other nations, large and small: Canada, China, New Zealand, Sweden, India, South Africa ... Let's get this straight: They worry about us? Not about North Korea and its nukes? Not about lunatic Muslim fundamentalists who have waged attacks not just in America? Not about Palestinians who will turn their own children into human bombs?... My list can go on, too. This is one screwy weltanschauung.
His kicker's even funnier: ...the day is coming when the UN must ask whether it is appropriate for its headquarters to remain in New York, whether it is appropriate to act as stretcher-bearers for US imperialism — or whether it might be better to rejoin the Rest of the World. The sooner that day comes, the better. I fear you will find all too much agreement with that statement.
Meanwhile in New York...
: The perfect (if sad) Gawker post: The Concorde is grounded?! No smoking in bars?! And now, Lespinasse is closing?! What the hell is happening to New York? We're the last bastion of decadence, remember? What's next? No more Hilton sisters? No more cocaine? No more social climbing? That and guys with machine guns hanging arond in unfashionable camoflauge.
Rumsfeld's performance
: Donald Rumsfeld's hissy fit about coverage of looting in Iraq gets a bad review from al-Jazeera: "It's untidy. And freedom's untidy. And free people are free to make mistakes and commit crimes and do bad things," his adroit fingers this time pointing at no particular member of the press. Lawlessness, closed hospitals and fires burning in Baghdad and other cities are a freed people venting their frustrations, apparently.
If ever an Oscar was deserved for minimizing catastrophic reports coming out of Iraq with jocular "henny penny" disbelief, then Rumsfeld has a date with Hollywood. : Meanwhile, in Britain, 10 Downing and the Ministry of Defense attacked the BBC's coverage of looting. At its daily briefing, No 10 argued that there are always reprisals for a few days when "a repressive regime falls - Kosovo, Sierra Leone, it probably goes back to the French revolution".
Tony Blair's spokesman insisted that "in the main the anarchy and disorder is being directed against symbols of the regime".
Complaining about Gilligan's report yesterday that Baghdadis are experiencing their "first days of freedom in more fear than they have ever known before", No 10 said: "Try telling that to people put in shredders or getting their tongues cut out." : And meanwhile in Iraq, British soldiers shot and killed five bank robbers. I await complaints that this was British cruelty.
We can't win either way; we'll be attacked for letting looters loot and attacked for cracking down.
I think we should invite France, Germany, and Russia to send their police. Spain is sending its Guardia Civil.
: And my local NBC station this morning said we're sending 500 police to Iraq.
: Thugs in Baghdad hijacked the Times of London's car at gunpoint.
: And 100 young people demonstrated against looting. Where? In front of the press hotel.
: Canada stands ready to send in the Mounties (but still not ready to say they're at least glad that Saddam is gone).
: After smashing Rumsfeld for his language, al-Jazeera tries a little light irony itself with this headline: "Baghdad, Mosul and Basra suffer the joys of liberation"
Germany's role in history
: Günter Grass disapproves of this war and says Germany is right to disapprove: We Germans are often asked if we are proud of our country. To answer this question has always been a burden. There were reasons for our doubts. But now I can say that the rejection of this preemptive war by a majority in my country has made me proud of Germany. After having been largely responsible for two world wars and their criminal consequences, we have made a difficult step. We seem to have learned from history. Quite to the contrary, mein Freund. Germany's voice in this has disturbed me. I would think that Germany, of all nations, would understand the need to remove a repressive tyrant from power. I would think that Germany, of all nations, would understand the need to protect a people from tyranny and, in the case of the Kurds, from genocide. I would think Germany would feel a special responsibility to act. Instead, Germany abrogated that responsibility.
Council of Weasels, Chapter II
: Some very illuminating things coming out of the Council of Weasels meeting in Russia -- all the more illuminating because this comes from the official Russian news agency (though badly translated, it still represents their spin).
First, Jacques Chirac is calling for nothing less than a world government, seated at the U.N. In other words, he is pushing for the EUing of the world. Just as the EU sets all kinds of laws for its member states and stands superior, so does Chirac want the U.N. to be the body to decree on war and on justice. In his words, foreign policy based on democratic values should lay on collective norms. To this end, the French president stressed the need to create an international justice system. No international order cannot lay on the logic of violence, he said. Let's note that "logic" is the French word of the year. Chirac's diplomats kept arguing against what they called the "logic of war." Their boss does it, too: Chirac said it is symbolic that this meeting includes the leaders of Russia, Germany and France because "our countries are situated on the continent that after totalitarian regimes, the two world conflicts, the holocaust and the 50-year Cold-War has decided to put an end to the logics of force. Peace was restored in Europe and it succeeded in curing its wounds".
In his words, only joints actions within the U.N. framework should determine the balance between diplomatic methods and the use of force. "In this world the force can be used only by the consent of the whole international community. Thus we will return to the fundamentals reflected in the Charter of the United Nations Organisation," Chirac said. First, the "logic of force" is, indeed logical; the logic of force could have averted war in Iraq, if you had not derailed it, Jacques. Saddam understood the logic of force; only when faced with force did he act as the U.N. decreed; but when he saw that you, Jacques, were cutting that force off at the knees he refused to cooperate. Perhaps he could have been forced into compliance with the threat of force instead of actual force but you stopped that. Tres illogique.
Further, your "logic" doesn't hold up from your own backyard. What, you would have wanted some world body to vote before defending you against Hitler? You would have allowed the U.N. to block any show of force against the expansion of Soviet force? You want the U.N. to approve any nation defending itself? (Mind you, I'm not some right-wing U.N. paranoid; I believe in supporting the potential of the U.N. as a means of finding peaceful paths; but giving the U.N. the power to rule the world? Now that's frightening.)
Chirac is either an idiot or he's the most meglomaniacal ruler of all, with ambitions to take over the world through the U.N. Hmmm. I vote for the first.
April 11, 2003
CNN and the Iraqi hug
: FoxNews just showed tape of now-ex U.N. ambassador Mohamed al-Douri leaving the Iraqi consulate in New York after taking down the official portrait of Saddam Hussein.
Then Fox showed juicier tape: al-Douri greeting the CNN reporter by name and coming back to give him a hug.
: See Glenn Reynolds for many links to the CNN/Iraq hubbub today.
From the Council of Weasels
: There are fun PR two-steps coming out of the Council of Weasels meeting in Russia. TASS, the official news agency, quotes Putin: Putin said "We have never said we support Saddam Hussein's regime, we have always said his regime does not correspond to human rights."
But one cannot resolve the problem by means of war, otherwise should wars be waged against 80 percent of countries who fail to conform to western standards? Putin said.
"Only nations themselves should determine their fate," the president said. OK, Puty-put. So you'd be happy if Yugoslavia were still bombing and cleansing at your doorstep. And I get it: Chechnya shouldn't determine its fate because it's not a nation. Or is it?
: A fuller quote and different translation from another story: "We must remember that up to 80 per cent of the world's nations do not meet European democratic standards but only the people of these nations can determine their future. The principle of sovereignty should remain unshakable," Mr. Putin said.
"And another question is: are those nations ready for the introduction of democracy?" See my note below on anti-war side's condescension to the Iraqi people.
Not ready for democracy?
When are humans not ready for democracy? When are they ready, instead, for totalitarian rule?
I guess Russia wasn't ready for democracy all those years and that's why it had Joe Stalin, eh?
And when the Berlin Wall fell, was Russia ready for democracy then ... or did the people demand it?
Now that Baghdad has fallen, will the other Arab nations be ready for democracy...or will the people simply demand it?
: Schroeder also made reference to needed reforms at the U.N. -- including reforms of the security council.
I think the accepted definition of Security Council reform is kicking France off, no?
The Baghdad Bob fan club
: News.com.au says Baghdad Bob has lots of web fan. (Sadly, the site they feature is down now). Some of Bob's lines are immortal (though he likely isn't:: :"We made them drink poison last night and Saddam Hussein's soldiers and his great forces gave the Americans a lesson ... truly."
: "The infidels are committing suicide by the hundreds on the gates of Baghdad."
: "Be assured, Baghdad is safe and protected." : From the site: The site was so popular that 4000 visitors per second showed up from around the world and overwhelmed this shared server...
What started out as a private joke to be shared by a small group of friends has turned into a hit. Check back in 24 hours or so... : And a profile from Cairo. [via Command Post]
Why they'll really hate us
: There is no media meme I hate more than the question, "Why do they hate us?" The implication is that "their" hatred is justified and thus their actions against us -- on 9.11 -- are justified (and our war there is unjustified). This is a despicable bit of tortured logic and morality. The rhetorical equivalent is to ask why another "they" -- the Germans -- hated the Jews as if there is any reason for bigotry and hatred and as if that, then, justifies what the atrocities that resulted. Both questions are equally offensive, equally wrong.
I don't give a goddamn why "they" hate us.
I have to make my moral and political judgments based on what I think is right -- not on the basis of a popularity contest and especially not a popularity contest among countries and dictators who do not allow democracy or equal rights or free speech, countries that do not allow the governed to govern, countries that are nothing but repressive dictatorships.
Now, having said all that, I now see that there is a reason why "they" will hate us:
"They" -- that is, the repressive, anti-democratic, dictators of the Arab world -- will hate us, indeed, for bringing demoracy to Iraq -- if we are successful -- for that will make their people want to rise up and gain their rightful freedoms.
"They" -- the fearful leaders, not their oppressed peoples -- will hate us for making their people question -- and then overthrow -- their leadership.
"They" are scared shitless by what their satellite channels showed to their people this week.
Of course, we are going to hear criticism of us from Arab leaders. We heard criticism of us from Saddam Hussein, didn't we? But when he left, the true feelings of his people came out, didn't they?
Note, then, this from today's Washington Post on the rumbles caused in Saudi Arabia by the liberation of Iraq: Mohsen Awajy knows better than most Saudis the perils of speaking his mind on such subjects as elections and government accountability.
Nine years ago, not long after the Persian Gulf War, the religious scholar and agronomist was thrown into prison for co-writing a petition that suggested Saudis be given a "choice" on who ruled the country. He was released in 1998, four years into his nine-year sentence, with the admonition that he could end up back in jail if he spoke out again.
Dissidents like Awajy were emboldened once more by the current conflict in Iraq. Many recognized that the government was allowing dissent and anger to flow. Saudis watching the war have been successively outraged by civilian casualties, elated at Iraqi resistance and depressed when the war turned in favor of U.S.-led forces, and are now expressing humiliation at the rapid collapse of Baghdad. The government has sought to manage and co-opt antiwar fervor. In a country where public demonstrations are banned, there is new debate about political reforms that were suggested long before the first U.S. strikes against Iraq.
"The regime used to be brutal in peaceful conditions," said Awaji, who intends to call on the government to distance itself from the United States when the war finally ends. "In this crisis, we find a lot of opportunities to express our feelings. Without trouble in the region, we aren't able to say anything."
Condescension
: In the comments on my post about helping to establish a free press in Iraq with the help of weblogs (below), some of the antiwar hangers-on here reveal something I think it telling in their dismissal of my proposal. One says it's just dumb. Another suggests we don't care about democracy there, only invasions. Another says that free speech won't be allowed under the "re-repression of Iraq."
What this indicates to me (and to another commenter there) is a tremendous condescension to the Iraqi people (and, of course, to our motives). It indicates part of the problem with those who have opposed this war.
What they are saying, in the end, is that the Iraqis don't deserve freedom, that they won't be capable of supporting it, that they were not worth liberating.
My support of our action comes out of my populism. If I believe in the inherent wisdom of the people in this country, I have to believe in the inherent wisdom of the Iraqi people.
Oh, this will take work. These people have not known democracy or free speech or free media (see the item below). But that will be the key to their future. We can offer them no less.
Humanitarian aid starts with food and water. But it doesn't end there. It must include economic development, academic development, and media development.
Hey, weasels, forgive that debt
: Keeping alive the John McCain suggestion that France, Germany, and Russia should forgive their Iraqi debuts, here comes a story from Radio Free Europe that says Russia wants not only the debt repaid but also wants Iraq to honor Saddam's oil deals. It hopes to collect on an outstanding Soviet-era debt and it has also set its sights on Iraq's potentially lucrative oil fields. Russia's LUKoil energy company had signed contracts with Saddam Hussein's government and says it is ready to initiate legal proceedings if the future Iraqi government fails to honor the deal. But analysts say priority in postwar-Iraq business deals will likely be given to those countries whose forces toppled Hussein's regime...
The state of Iraqi media
: Radio Free Europe's site assesses the state of Iraqi media: Like virtually all other aspects of the Iraqi state and society, the media were completely incorporated into Hussein's totalitarian structure, a reality that was symbolically represented by the fact that Hussein gave his eldest son, Uday Hussein, responsibility for it....
Internet access in Iraq, which was only launched in 1997, was severely restricted by the Hussein regime. In 2001, the U.S. government estimated that there were just 12,500 Internet users in Iraq, which has a population of more than 26 million. This same piece gives other valuable background on, for examle, the Ba'ath Party, the Shi'a movement, and Arab press reaction. [via Die Zeit]
The peacenik quandry
: Julian Barnes in the Guardian goes to great lengths (by a few too many column-inches) to try to justify the "peacenik" view of peace in Iraq. We're going to be seeing a lot of that now. (Calling Ms. Garofalo! Calling Ms. Garofalo!) But he doesn't grapple with the issues; it's just a war-is-bad recitation: Well, peacenik, are you happy now that peace is coming? No, because I don't think this war, as conceived and justified, was worth a child's finger. At least, are you happy that Saddam's rule is effectively over? Yes, of course, like everyone else. So, do you see some incompatibility here? Yes, but less than the incompatibilities in your position. Nothing about the oppression of the Iraqi people. Nothing about the crowds happy to be free. Nothing about the children whom Saddam gassed and imprisoned. Yup, speaking as a former peacenik myself, I have to say it wouldn't be easy being a peacenik these days.
The Baghdad Blog Times
: We webloggers should help Iraqis start weblog newspapers.
Iraq has had no free press, let alone freedom, for generations.
Weblogs give them the chance to publish freely, overnight, with no expense of printing presses and paper, no production equipment needed, no distribution network needed, no investment at all.
The beauty of weblogging is that it is the world's cheapest -- no, history's cheapest -- means of publishing. Weblogging brings the power of the press down to the people. And these people need it.
Of course, the audience in Iraq would be small at the start: tiny.
But the audience who can connect in Iraq and the audience elsewhere in the world who read this would be influential. Thus Iraqis would gain a voice in their country and in the world.
And this instant free press would exercise muscles of expression that have atrophied in Iraq. It would teach them how to report and comment and how to find the truth from beyond their borders.
When Eastern European countries were freed, Western newspaper journalists rushed there to teach them how to be journalists and how to publish. But those countries had an infrastructure of expression that does not exist in Iraq. And, besides, times have changed:
The web and weblogging have lowered the barrier to free expression.
I've been driving myself nuts trying to find a story I read a few weeks ago about a web-only newspaper in South Korea that is gaining more influence than the printed perss (can anybody send me that link?). That is a model for what can be accomplished in Iraq. Salam Pax is a model, too: He's just one man who told the stories from inside Baghdad that were not being told. Hell, Josh Marshall keeping the Trent Lott story alive is a model, too, for it proved that one tenacious reporter can influence the national debate.
So what would we have to do? Not very damned much. Maybe nothing.
I'd be happy to exchange emails with any Iraqis who can speak English and who wants to start weblog, giving them instruction in how to make it happen. If this clicks and grows, we can help fund hosting for them. We can provide compelling design. We can shine the spotlight of the world on them. Or we can just watch. With so very little, the people of Iraq can gain a free press.
Imagine how that will change the world.
Today
: I'll be disconnected for a few hours today; posting when I get connected.
April 10, 2003
Another liberation
: Of course, KurdMedia.com is fairly buzzing with news that Kirkuk is liberated... and with speculation about what's next.
He's baaa-aaack
: So Geraldo wrote "I will not reveal coalition positions and strategies" 1,000 times in the sand and he was allowed back into Iraq.
War humor
: A FoxNews correspondent just told a joke going around the Baghdad streets: Baghdad Bob, Iraqi information minister, goes to meet Saddam at an undisclosed location. He says nothing, just puts his finger up in a "V." Saddam says, "We won?" Bob says, "No, we're the only two left."
He's in
: Christopher Allbritton, the reporter-turned-blogger-turned-war-correspondent, went through a lot to arrive at the front. Now he's there, at the conquered Kurkuk: The mood is World Cup crazy as people were hanging off trucks and speeding to the city. Armed men stood up in the back of pickup trucks waving the yellow or green flags of the KDP or the PUK, respectively. As we passed, they waved to me and honked, chanting, “America!” ...
I met a B2I reader [of Allbritton's weblog] earlier, djoy, who now says I can use his real name: Delshad Fattah, 33, a former resident of Kirkuk. He came with me to Mosul and was now on the way to Kirkuk with me and Freydoon. I don’t think he expected this when he agreed to meet me for tea at 10 a.m.
He said many of the people on the road were going to Kirkuk to loot, and shook his head in sadness. “This is what Saddam has done to my people. He has turned us all into thieves.”
Well, not fierce...
: A soldier calls home (from the UN HQ in Baghdad) and we get to read about it at Sgt. Stryker. My favorite bit: Any time anybody shoots back at all, embedded reporters call it "fierce resistance."
Women at war
: Glenn Reynolds (who must have inserted a new accellerator card in his brain today) looks at coverage of women fighting this war and wonders: Is Al Jazeera reporting that the Iraqis got their butts kicked, in part, by women? I can't help but think that the psychological impact of that would be dramatic, and largely positive.
Whither Salam Pax?
: I've received communication from two people who say they know Salam Pax and they ask that he not be found and that his privacy be respected. Of course, his privacy must be respected. If he does not want to be found, he should not be. If he wants to be, he should know that he has the respect of so many of us. But that's not the point: Praying that he is safe, if he needs help in any way, we bloggers should help him. We helped bring the spotlights to him. We bear some responsibility for his safety. In short and at a minimum: If he wants it and if he needs it, his is a tip jar we should all fill up.
Rubble
: The last we saw Americans sifting through rubble, they were looking for the heroes of September 11th. Now they are sifting through the rubble of Baghdad looking for the devil of Iraq.
Missing the review
: The NY Times' Alessandra Stanley has been reviewing TV coverage of the war and, boy, did she miss the story yesterday.
Now I used to be a critic for a few publications and the angle yesterday could not have been more obvious; I wrote about it as we watched it -- and as the world watched it: This was stirring television, captivating television, television that will change the world.
But Stanley didn't notice that... or didn't want to.
Instead, she concentrated on the image of an American soldier putting an American flag on the head of the doomed statue of Saddam Hussein "like a gallows hood." The sight also silenced news anchors and many viewers: the tableau of conquest was exactly the image most likely to offend the Muslim world. And it was exactly the image that the administration had most wanted to avoid in its campaign to portray the fall of Baghdad as a popular insurrection. Whoa. I, too, wrote about the ticklish point of that flag, below.
But let's put this in perspective: Here were soldiers who fought across the desert to liberate these people. At the moment of their freedom, the people asked for their help in dragging down the statue as celebration. The soldiers, too, had reason to celebrate and reason to be proud of their flag.
And we learn this morning that the flag was not put there by some tabaccy-chewing, Bible-thumping, cracker cliche of an American. Cpl. Edward Chin is the son of immigrants who made America -- specifically blue-collar New York -- their home and he was proud enough to go fight for it. He hoisted the flag there. At the least, this was a moment of pride and gratitude. At the most, it was a lapse.
But in any case, this was not the story!
History was made on television yesterday. Alessandra Stanley -- and thus the Times -- were not there to record it. They were blind.
: Donald Sensing has more to say on this.
French bias
: Command Post points us to a dispatch by a le Figaro reporter in Baghdad that covers the same scene we all saw on TV yesterday -- but this guy treats it as if it was a small moment, a shrug. He's French, after all. But then there's this: "And you French. Are you proud of supporting Saddam to the end?" he said before taking up a new chant. "Bush nice, Saddam not."
The flag
: Cpl. Edward Chin, the man who brought down Saddam yesterday, is on the Today show right now. The flag he put up there was in the Pentagon when it was attacked on 9.11.
Debt
: More on Iraq's crushing debt: $383 billion. As Glenn Reynolds suggests, let's keep this pressure meme alive: Hey France and Germany, how about starting the bidding by canceling your debts?
What goes around comes around:
: As Glenn Reynolds would say, HEHE: BBC correspondent Emma Jane Kirby, in Paris, says that many French people, who believed this was an illegal and hot-headed war, have been stunned by the welcome American forces received in Baghdad on Wednesday.
The French newspaper, Liberation, has warned that President Chirac is now threatened with isolation on the international stage.
April 09, 2003
  And the lamb shall lie down with the lion
: So on this, even the Sun and the Mirror agree (and I'll wager that at least one of the Post and the Daily News in New York will sing harmony Thursday morning). Nothing brings warring tabloid hacks together like a great headline.
The wise people of Iraq
: Amir Taheri, an Iranian, writes in the Times of London that the Arab street did not erupt in anger, as predicted, at the overthrow of Saddam by the infidel Yanks. These days the Arab media are full of articles about how the Arabs feel humiliated by what has happened in Iraq, how they are frustrated, how they hate America for having liberated the people of Iraq from their oppressor, and how they hope that the Europeans, presumably led by Jacques Chirac, will ride to the rescue to preserve a little bit of Saddam’s legacy with the help of the United Nations.
Thank God, the peoples of Iraq, not deceived by Arab hyperbole, are ignoring such nonsense. As I said this morning, the TV we saw this morning will change the world -- and the irony is that Al-Jazeera and Arab media will be the agent of that change. For other Arab regimes may fear what happened today. But the Arab people cannot fear freedom. They can only dream of it.
Image-conscious
: A University of Texas prof writes for Al-Jazeera criticizing American media coverage of today's fall of Saddam: One obvious question: During live coverage, viewers saw a US soldier drape over the face of Hussein a US flag, which was quickly removed and replaced with an Iraqi flag.
Commanders know that the displaying the US flag suggests occupation and domination, not liberation. NBC's Tom Brokaw reported that the Arab network Al Jazeera was "making a big deal" out of the incident with the American flag, implying that US television would -- and should -- downplay that part of the scene. Which choice tells the more complete truth? What, as if Tom Brokaw is the boss of all U.S. media, sending them hidden messages? That's the way it works -- no, now that's the way it worked -- in Iraq, Prof.
It gets worse. After complaining that we don't focus enough on the dead, he blames us -- well, really, he blames the U.N.'s sanctions -- for Iraq's economic problems.
This guy is the Peter Arnett of the academe.
: Nick Denton and I were IMing earlier about that American flag on the Saddam statue. Nick says the soldier who put it there should be court-martialed. I can hear his captain screaming up at him: "Stow that flag, soldier! You want to start a riot and mess up my pension?"
Of course, that is the image Al-Jazeera chooses to show -- often.
Where is Salam Pax?
: Now is the time for those who know enough about the identity of Baghdad blogger Salam Pax to communicate with news organizations who have correspondents in Baghdad (are you listening NY Times, CNN, BBC, Guardian, and all the rest who wrote about him?) so they can try to find him, make sure he's OK, and find out what his needs are.
He is ours, fellow bloggers. It is time we take care of him.
The reason why
: Rumsfeld summed up the real goal of this war: Saddam Hussein is now taking his rightful place alongside Hitler, Stalin, Lenin, Ceausescu in the pantheon of failed brutal dictators and the Iraqi people are well on their way to freedom.
Hey, kids, this is history
: Here's how the BBC explains today's news to children: "An amazing event that will probably be shown in history lessons in classrooms throughout the world in years to come..."
Human shills
: The Marines came face-to-face with "human shields" in Baghdad: There were some American and European "human shields'' at the rally, people who had come to put themselves in harm's way in hopes of stopping the shooting. They chastised the Marines for attacking Iraq and promoting war.
That angered some of the men. "I didn't bury two of my fellow Marines just so someone like that could call us murderers,'' said one Marine, angry and teary, referring to an Iraqi artillery attack that killed two of his colleagues on Monday. "They died for this country.'' To quote the Iraqis: Wankers.
Vox pop
: I encourage you to read the comments on this blog (and other blogs that welcome them). Of course, I don't agree with everything said there (if I did, that'd be pretty boring) and some are more eloquent than others. But it's wonderful to just sit back and watch the dialogue that does occur. This doesn't happen in any other medium.
Bluff calling
: Sen. John McCain said on FoxNews that if the French and Germans care about Iraq's future, he suggests they forgive Iraq's debts to them -- especially since most of the debt was run up buying weapons.
Celebration
: Glenn Reynolds quotes Tim Blair: I SHOULDN'T be so happy. After all, I'm a right-wing deathbeast, and the end (or near end) of a war should upset me, because we conservatives lust for war all the time....
Those Iraqis dancing in the streets? That should really piss me off, because I want to oppress them and steal their oil. Why are they even able to dance? I was promised 500,000 murders, yet thus far only 1,000 or so innocents have died.
So why am I so damn happy? I really can't explain. Yes, I shouldn't be so happy, either. After all, I'm a liberal: Heart bleeds. Underbelly soft. Weeps easily.
I should be haranguing any nearby victim about the conspiratorial military-industrial complex grown even more powerful. I should be railing on about the Bush plan to take over the world (or am I supposed to complain about his isolationism? I'm so confused). I should be tsk-tsking that we're going to find ourselves in another damned quagmire. I should be singing Where have all the flowers gone? damnit. And drinking French wine.
But I feel like dancing with those Iraqis in the streets. I cheer for the gigantic guy with the sledgehammer when he slams the marble plinth and douses Saddam's picture in gas and set it afire (we liberals call that "acting out," or perhaps I'm just projecting). Why, I even laughed when Donald Rumseld tried hard not to be smug today.
What's wrong with me? What's wrong with our world?
Women of war, the war of women
: This is the war when women arrived, not just fighting side-by-side with men but becoming the most visible heroes. There is, of course, fight-to-the-last-bullet Pfc. Jessica Lynch. And I just watched a great CNN report about a brave pilot named "KC" whose plane took many hits; it is riddled with holes, big and small; she lost much of her control and debated whether to eject or struggle back to base. She made it back to base. And now she's being interviewed: calm, cool (and, by the way, beautiful). At the end of the interview, the reporter tells her to tell us at home what "KC" stands for. With a proud grin, she says, "Killer chick."
Michael Moore: But enough about Iraq, what about ME?
: Michael Moore reacts to the liberation of Baghdad: It appears that the Bush administration will have succeeded in colonizing Iraq sometime in the next few days. This is a blunder of such magnitude -- and we will pay for it for years to come. It was not worth the life of one single American kid in uniform, let alone the thousands of Iraqis who have died, and my condolences and prayers go out to all of them. Mike, you blind fool, didn't you see the people celebrating in the streets? Was it a mistake to liberate them? Is freedom worth a price? Liberalism used to be about protecting the rights of the unprotected; that's how I define it. That is why, as a liberal, I am delighted with today's news. Some are afraid of retaliation at work or at school or in their neighborhoods because they have been vocal proponents of peace. They have been told over and over that it is not "appropriate" to protest once the country is at war, and that your only duty now is to "support the troops." No, he's not talking about Iraq. He's talking about America -- the America of his imagination.
But actually, he's only making a transition to the real point of his piece: He's bragging about how his little Oscar performance improved his business. He brags about the box office for his movie, the sales for his book, the traffic to his web site, the rentals of his videos.
So, you see, this isn't about you or me or oppressed Iraqis. It's all about Michael Moore, greed machine. Well, the good news -- if there can be any good news this week -- is that not only have neither I nor others been silenced, we have been joined by millions of Americans who think the same way we do.... Don't be defeated by polls that show 70% of the public in favor of the war. Yes, don't be defeated by the truth.
Which smoking gun do you want?
: MSNBC says the latest three suspected WMD finds are testing negative.
Let's deal with this canard right now:
What if we don't find WMD? So what? Yes, it was the pretext for war.
But after watching the liberation of a people who clearly want to be liberated -- and after already hearing more details of the tyranny they suffered -- can you still say that we should not have waged this war to oust Saddam Hussein?
Is the smoking gun a chemical?
Or is the smoking gun hundreds of children in prison?
Is the smoking gun a missle too long?
Or is the smoking gun a cell where citizens were tortured and murdered by their government?
Is the smoking gun a germ?
Or is the smoking gun a people who yearned to be free and now are?
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