Hateful Muslim cleric Omar Bakri Mohammed has lived well off the dole in England. The moocher cleric is due for a government angioplasty — no doubt because he clogged his arteries eating well in the land he would destroy. And there’s more:
He receives £331.28 a month in incapacity benefit and £183.30 a month in disability living allowance because of a leg injury he suffered in his teens.
Both payments will continue for at least six months while he is abroad, as long as he plans to return, as will the housing benefit on his home in Edmonton, north London, and his council tax benefit.
His wife, who remains in Britain with their seven children, can also continue to claim a benefits package thought to be worth at least £1,300 a month. Bakri drives a Toyota people carrier worth £30,000, paid for under a scheme called Motability.
The haughtily named Chartered Institute of Journalists issues a hissy fit over news organizations encouraging citizens to gather news, saying that such efforts are “totally unacceptable and border on the irresponsible.”
How ridiculous. I’d say that the CIJ’s attitude is journalistically offensive. We journalists should believe that more information, more news, more coverage, more knowledge are all good things for journalism and for society.
The CIJ frets that this puts citizens in danger. Well, we’re all big boys and girls and we can make those decisions. It also complains about copyright and payment to citizen journalists. There, too, they can take care of themselves and chose to share or sell or not.
I think the real problem here is that they can’t stand the idea the competition — maybe even competition who work for free because they believe in sharing what they know.
Donald Rumsfeld as announced a, well, odd memorial, a tonedeaf commemoration, a tasteless tribute planned for the Pentagon the fourth anniversary of 9/11. Says the NY Daily News:
The Pentagon will hold a massive march and country music concert to mark the fourth anniversary of 9/11, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said in an unusual announcement tucked into an Iraq war briefing yesterday.
“This year the Department of Defense will initiate an America Supports You Freedom Walk,” Rumsfeld said, adding that the march would remind people of “the sacrifices of this generation and of each previous generation.”
The march will start at the Pentagon, where nearly 200 people died on 9/11, and end at the National Mall with a show by country star Clint Black.
He lost me with the Clint Black concert.
I can understand a walk — a candelight vigil by daylight. I can understand a display of patriotism — this is the Pentagon and that was an attack on our nation. On a different day, I could go so far as to understand a concert to raise money for the Pentagon memorial, even a country-western concert with some good, old American pride.
But a county-western concert on the day and in the place of the tragedy? What’s next: line-dancing on the graves?
Here’s the official FAQ. The event has big and surprising sponsors, even the Washington Post:
Q: Who is supporting the Freedom Walk?
R: The America Supports You Freedom Walk enjoys the support of Stars and Stripes newspaper, Pentagon Federal Credit Union, Subway, Lockheed Martin, The Washington Post, WTOP Radio Network, and ABC WJLA-TV Channel 7 & NewsChannel 8, among others.
And it turns out this will be coming to a town near you, with or without Clint Black:
Q: Why is DoD organizing this event?
R: Since September 11, 2001, the Pentagon has provided citizens with opportunities to commemorate September 11 in meaningful ways. The America Supports You Freedom Walk is the fourth September 11 commemorative activity sponsored by the DoD. The goal for the 5th anniversary in 2006 is for each state to host a Freedom Walk in order to provide an opportunity for as many citizens as possible to reflect on the importance of freedom.
: Check out this video interview on About.com (where I also work) with the cast and crew of the Dukes of Hazard: The director says he was inspired to make the movie by 9/11 because what we need is a good, shit-kicking American movie.
The word “crass” immediately comes to mind. Call me crazy, but I just don’t think that a commemoration of 9/11 should be mixed in with a “support the troops” march. You know what this is? A thinly veiled pro-war rally. And concert! …
It’s four years later. I think at this point we should be diminishing the pomp and circumstance of the commememorations, not addding to it. The purpose of the event is “to remember the victims of September 11, honor our troops and celebrate our freedom.” I don’t think it’s right to do those things together. It’s an opportunistic move designed to make people feel good about a war that a lot of people don’t feel good about it. Mixing the “let freedom ring” chorus in with the funeral dirge that is still ringing in the hearts of the victims’ families is just shy of vile.
I do support the troops. I do cherish my freedom. And I do like a good concert. But how those things fit in with remembering those who died on September 11, 2001 is beyond me. I think that at this point, the administration has chosen to remember the event, not the people. They’ve chosen to celebrate the start of a time of war rather than memorialize the end of nearly 3,000 lives.
The Times reports that Carl Icahn is militating to shake up Time Warner. Couldn’t happen to a nicer conglomerate. The company never did figure out how to spell sinergee cinergy synorgy synergy. The damned stock is as sleepy as AOL’s head of customer service. The future of media is small, not big. Time for this iceberg to calf before it melts.
Charmaine Yoest, who extended an invitation for a blogging junket to the Justice Sunday II, responds to my post, among others, here. I figured it was accidental that I got invited, but she says that it was quite intentional. I do salute them for being open to inviting all sides. I wasn’t sure what group was extending the invitation and plane tickets; turns out it is the Family Research Council. Charmaine scolds me for my word choice about these folks and she’s right. But still, I am antimatter to their matter. And I certainly would not take their money. But I’m glad everyone’s being transparent about the arrangements.
: Yesterday, an AP reporter called to talk about this. During the conversation, it occurred to me that I did not fully disclose one payment I received to be at an event I also blogged and I should have done so. I went to an Annenberg confab about — what else? — the future of news and they paid honoraria and picked up travel for the speakers. I then also blogged the event. I should have told you that.
Jason Calacanis is having properconniptionsover the comScore marketing study on blogs released this week. Fred Wilson and Heather Green have moments of dubious doubt themselves. Krucoff, says Jason, nails it and quizzes Rick Bruner, who helped on the study itself, as Rick tries to answer questions on the methodology on his blog. I leave it to you to follow the links above to the specifics.
My first reaction is that all this shows how messed up panel research is. This is the method used by Nielsen et al to measure TV and radio and print readership — affecting billions of ad dollars — and it is and always has been relative bullshit. That’s why advertisers buy it, though — because it is relative, because they can compare this magazine to that magazine on the same sheet. But it’s all based on a small and only allegedly representative sample of people. It’s meaningless. When I worked on magazines that allegedly had eight readers per copy — damned dogeared, they were — we benefited from this relative bullshit. But when I came online, we could measure the bull ourselves: We could compare our server and cookie stats with what the panel research told us and we could tell when they didn’t have any panel members in entire states. Panel research is a novel in numbers.
My second reaction is, however, that blogs need some sort of numbers advertisers will buy. I thought it was a good idea to try to get that research and, as I read that link, I see that this is partly my fault: At the blogging business session I emceed at Bloggercon II, I emphasized the need to feed advertisers their metrics. So it’s a damned shame that this research is raising such eyebrows.
My third reaction is that we should be creating our own meaningful metrics. Bloggers who care about making business at blogging (and let’s remember: that’s only some of us) should be agreeing on cookies and also on new means of measurement and new things to measure.
This isn’t as simple and stupid as an a-list or a panel or page-views or eyeballs. This is a much richer thing, this unmedium of ours, and it needs much smarter measurement. See Mary Hodder’s napkin notes for just some of the means of measuring blogs’ popularity and appeal; I can think of many more.
Advertisers are screaming for proof of “engagement” these days and while silly, inky magazines are trying to “engage” with flashing ads on paper, we flash without trying. We engage or die. We live by relationships and trust — more fave ad words. We have influence — yet another fave word. We need to measure and report all that.
Instead, we’re futzing and fussing and fuming over the few numbers we have and giving advertisers another excuse to ignore us. Arrgh.
comScore should reveal much more about its study so that bloggers can poke at it and so the crowd — the wise crowd — can help improve the methodology and ferret out what makes sense and what doesn’t — and let’s remember that these numbers do show that blogs are a thing that should not be ignored. If something looks odd, explain it or explain why you can’t.
And we should start finding new ways to measure our real value — and that’s not about continuing to chase the big numbers that are so old-media and it’s not about continuing to value relative bullshit. We need to find the numbers that count.
: Oh, and while we’re at it, can somebody point me to exactly what the oft-quoted and bragged-about Alexa numbers are really based on? Does there data come from the toolbar still? Do you know a single soul who actually uses that toolbar? How big is their sample? How representative?
Every one of these services that now tout numbers should be transparent about methodology and sources and scale. It’s late, so I’m not going to go looking now. But if you can point me to such disclosure at Blogpulse, Technorati, Bloglines, et al, please leave a link in the comments and let’s start by finding the best of breed in transparency.
It’s troubling, for me, because she makes compelling arguments for Tony Blair’s new policies of zero tolerance for inciting terrorism — in other words, for speech that incites terrorism. The speech and the speakers they attack are truly hateful and dangerous. But I still do not know how to rationalize this with my American belief in the sanctity of free speech. Isn’t free speech what we’re fighting for?
Manji says:
But if these anti-terror measures feel like an overreaction to the London bombings, that’s only because Britons, like so many in the West, have been avoiding a vigorous debate about what values are most worth defending in our societies….
Neither the watery word “tolerance” nor the slippery phrase “mutual respect” will cut it as a guiding value. Why tolerate violent bigotry? Where’s the “mutual” in that version of mutual respect? …
She gives an example of speech that cannot be tolerated: Omar Bakri Muhammad — who is no longer tolerated in England — issues a fatwa against Terrence McNally for his play depicting Jesus as a gay man.
He has even lionized the July 7 bombers as the “fantastic four.” He is a counselor of death, and should not have been allowed to remain in Britain. And thanks to Mr. Blair’s newfound fortitude, he has reportedly fled England for Lebanon.
The Muslim Council of Britain, a mainstream lobbying group that assailed Mr. Blair’s proposed measures, has long claimed that men like Mr. Bakri represent only a slim fraction of the country’s nearly two million Muslims. Assuming that’s true, British Muslims – indeed, Muslims throughout the West – should rejoice at their departures or deportations, because all forms of Islam that respect the freedom to disbelieve, to go one’s own way, will be strengthened.
Amen. But now here is the best of it: Manji proposes the value that “could guide Western societies”:
individuality. When we celebrate individuality, we let people choose who they are, be they members of a religion, free spirits, or something else entirely….
Of course, there may be better values than individuality for Muslims and non-Muslims to embrace. Let’s have that debate – without fear of being deemed self-haters or racists by those who twist multiculturalism into an orthodoxy. We know the dangers of taking Islam literally. By now we should understand the peril of taking tolerance literally.
: I can’t help but contrast what she says with this, from an American political leader:
…there is no such society that I’m aware of where we’ve had radical individualism and it has succeeded as a culture.
That, of course, comes from our own Rick Santorum railing against the evils of radical individualism.
Americanism, modernity, enlightenment, civilization, tolerance, individualism. They are worth fighting for. The Bakri’s of the world are worth fighting. The only question is how.
