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BuzzMachine
by Jeff Jarvis
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March 31, 2003
So Christian of them
: From Islam Online: Spokesman of the Orthodox Church in the Holy Lands, archimandrite Attallah Hanna declared that U.S. President George Bush, his Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, British Premier Tony Blair, his Foreign Minister Jack Straw have all been deprived from visiting the Church of Nativity in Bethlehem.
This decision was taken to express the refusal of the Palestinian Christians of the U.S.-led invasion on Iraq.
Self-loathing
: Stephen Pollard in the Times of London says the anti-war movement is all about self-loathing: They come from all parties, and none, but they have one common idée fixe: they hate the West. They hate, in fact, themselves....
The majority of those who marched against the war have realised that the world has moved on. The war has started, and there are only two possible sides to take: Saddam’s or the coalition’s.
Those who are still protesting have made their choice plain for all to see. There was never any doubt which side they would take. So consumed are they with contempt for their own society that they cannot bear the thought of the West actually defending itself. When America does just that, the reaction is not to thank heavens for a nation that is prepared to stand up for freedom, but to spit in its face....
Stop, missile, stop!
: Well, it didn't take long. A "human shield" is feared dead. She was "shielding" a grain silo and, guess what: a middle-aged woman is not an effective shield against a big muddah bomb.
Perfect
: The anti-war, anti-America, anti-Bush, anti-our-side Mirror hires Baghdad tool Peter Arnett.
He backtracks on his abject, nearly tearful apologies of this morning and now acts all defiant again: After his sacking, Pulitzer Prize winner Arnett said: “I report the truth of what is happening here in Baghdad and will not apologise for it. I have always admired your newspaper and am proud to be working for it.”...
“The Iraqis let me stay because they see me as a fellow warrior. They know I might not agree with them. But I’ve got their respect.” I think you mean fellow traveler, Pete.
But it gets worse. Arnett then "writes" a classic bit of Mirror hooha: am still in shock and awe at being fired. There is enormous sensitivity within the US government to reports coming out from Baghdad.
They don't want credible news organisations reporting from here because it presents them with enormous problems....
The US and British want to come here, take over the city, upturn the government and take us through to a new era. The troops are in the country and fighting there [sic] way up here. These are the rantings of a pathetic has-been: nonsensical, rambling, defensive, stupid.
He makes reporters look bad. He makes them look even worse than Geraldo.
What a doofus.
al-English
: Ben Hammersley is in Sweden and among the many benefits of that -- good fish, beautiful women, civilized subways, free daily papers -- is that he can get a simultaneous English translation of al-Jazeera.
I'd watch that a helluva lot sooner than I'd watch the Yankees network.
Instead, I watch (and pay for) the Ish.com al-Jazeera feed. I'd rather understand what the hell they were saying.
The big picture
: Glenn Reynolds suggests in his latest TCS column that the embed program has been "a disaster for the networks" because all those reporters in the field are giving us the trees, but we never get to see the forest. (I thought that's what anchors were paid the big bucks to provide, no?)
Glenn says that weblogs can knit together these strands of reporting into that bigger picture because they converse with -- and add to -- each other. Thus he laments the lack of weblogs from the networks.
I'll take this one step further.
We've seen an earthshattering change in the flow of information in this war: We used to have too little information and too much of it was stale. Now we have too much information and too much of it is still uncooked, still not confirmed. So there is greater confusion.
Now you'd think that a weblog is the perfect device to solve that. And it is a good device, but it's still imperfect. I read Glenn himself and curse that he has a life (how dare he!) and so I don't get the benefit of his editing of the world and his perspective for as long as an hour at a time! So I go to the amazing Command Post but I get overdosed; I need somebody to blog that blog for me. As to my own war weblog, I find that I can't keep up with it all.
What to do?
A wise big media operation would start a weblog newsroom -- a 24/7 operation that goes out and finds the best on the web, categorizes it, and updates it (giving you all that late-breaking Geraldo news). It'd be a helluva lot cheaper than running an actual newsroom because all you're doing is linking, not reporting. And it would provide a real service in a time such as this. Individuals and distributed bunches of amateur webloggers can't do this as well (because we have jobs and lives and need to eat). Nobody can afford to start up such a stand-alone operation (for the demand lasts only as long as the big story). So the ideal company to do it is a big media operation -- a TV network, a cable network, a wire service, a national newspaper, somebody who would benefit from having the best of this worldwide web of reporting all in one place. They can hire experienced webloggers (who don't even need to work in the same office) and with them create the best news site on the web.
Call me.
Boycott idiots
: One of my company's webloggers, RJ White, found a document that's awe-inspiring in its stupidity on the AdBuster's web site: Readers' suggestions about how to "Boycott Brand America." (My notes in italics): : Now that I'm in China, I ride my bike (second hand) or walk everywhere. I don't buy things unless I really need them (I don't have a microwave). I live in a $100 a month apartment (even though I could afford better). I eat fresh and delicious food (I have lost over 50kgs of excess weight). And I don't watch TV (it's in Chinese) or read the newspaper (ignorant bliss is heaven).
So you've become a poor, ignorant, Communist peasant. That's progress.
: I initiated a boycott of travel to the US last year and will continue this, along with my ongoing boycott of Starbucks...
Take that, poor South American coffee growers!
: I'm going to get a job at a Starbucks in a small town, where the majority is Republican and pro-war, and where I will suggest, generate and voice opinions of opposition to not only the people who work there, but the customers as well.
I'll take a vente and a vent, please.
: We're trying to shut down Ithaca, NY's restaurant community for one night.
Saddam is grateful. The poor immigrant dishwasher is not.
: I think that I have a plan. Simply drive slowly.
Yes, and you'll irritate the crap out of every American behind you. Why don't you add a "Honk If You're An American Warmonger" bumpersticker; I'll bet you'll smoke out lots of them.
: A friend and I sewed monopoly dollars into dresses and sat in the mall with a set of bullhorns and told people about the evils of their consumerism. One middle-aged couple got mad at us and threw their greasy McDonald's lunches at us.
And who says fast food isn't good for us?
: Boycott American spelling and slang.
Yes, we make royalties everytime somebody says "dude."
: A very obvious way to hit part of the US economy is boycotting the movies.
You mean the French have to give up Jerry Lewis?
Saddam: Dead or alive (?)
: Since we have no idea whether Saddam is dead or alive, I think it's time for news reports to couch couch it.
The NY Times reported today, as if they knew it happened, that "President Saddam Hussein awarded the Iraqi soldier [who killed four U.S. soldiers with a suicide bomb] two posthomous medals."
Well, they sure didn't see Saddam do it. They didn't hear him do it. They accepted an Iraqi report that said he did it. And that's what the NY Times should say.
For Saddam's fate is now an issue. Donald Rumsfeld and Joint Chiefs Chief Richard Meyers spent the weekend on PundiTV taunting Saddam in a game of come-out-come-out-wherever-you-are (here's the official Pentagon version of the news). They're trying to get a message to the Iraqis that unless we see him, how do you know he's there? And that's a good question. It is a question.
: Update: Even his own ambaddador couches. [via Instapundit]
History lessons
: Thom Hartman at Common Dreams thinks he's being clever drawing a picture of George Bush to make him look like Adolf Hitler. I can't wait until his next chapter when he compares Saddam Hussein to... who, Thom?
Michael Moore thin? April fool's!
: My favorite headline in the latest issue of The Lemon: "Michael Moore rules out using hunger strike to protest war."
: More late-breaking humor: IT&W reports that Saddam Hussein has a weblog. "NBC has fired Peter Arnett for his comments on Iraqi TV. What a shame.... Petey and I are good friends. He came by the bunker just last week.... He's applying for a job at Al-Jazeera. I'm writing his letter of recommendation."
: So does Kim Jong Il.
Geraldo booted? Not booted? We report. You decide.
: I had an item less than an hour ago on my news warlog reporting that Geraldo Rivera was being booted from Iraq for revealing sensitive information on the air.
But Geraldo just appeared -- live -- on FoxNews with a bunch of Marines in a conquered Ba'ath party HQ 60 miles from Baghdad. Even on the pixelated video, you could see Geraldo's gigantic grin. Nothing wrong here.
At the end of the report, anchor David Assman asked Geraldo about the rumors.
Geraldo said he'd heard nothing.
"It sounds like some rats at my former network, NBC, are spreading some lies about me," he said. "They can't compete fair and square o nthe battlefield, so they try to stab me in the back... MSNBC is such a pathetic cable news network that they'll do anything they can to get attention."
Geraldo has been singing the praises of our boys on the front. It's hard to imagine the sin he'd have to commit to get kicked out.
At the end of the report, he turns to the soldiers and says, "I think these guys are pretty happy to see me." They say, yes, sir. And Geraldo concludes: "I intend to march into Baghdad right beside them."
If he can't get Osama, maybe he'll get Saddam.
: Update: More late-breaking Geraldo news. Drudge is posting new links every minute. Now Reuters and AFP say that Geraldo is getting the boot.
: On the other hand, there's Peter Arnett. I finally read the transcript of what he said on Iraqi TV. Dope. He never realized that he was a tool. Arnett was always braver than he was bright. It was kinda sad seeing him practically in tears as he saw his career smouldering like a Ba'ath headquarters, but he did it to himself. Dope.
Cat Stevens' ninth life
: Cat Stevens -- aka Yusuf Islam -- has returned to the studio to rerecord Peace Train for an album to benefit Iraqi children. Better he should sing than talk: "Peace Train is a song I wrote, the message of which continues to breeze thunderously through the hearts of millions of human beings and there is a powerful need for people to feel that gust of hope rise up again," he said.
"As a member of humanity and as a Muslim, this is my contribution to the call for a peaceful solution to the dangerous path some world leaders today seem to be taking." "Breeze thunderously through the hearts of millions?" His new life gave him neither humility nor eloquence.
Blog lovefest continues
: New York magazine on blogs and war: The media keep telling us that the military difference between this Gulf War and the last one is technology. True. But it’s the media difference, too. The change is the Web, and the people really following this war are following it online. Dozens of bloggers, writing under rubrics like the Fly Bottle, Skippy the Bush Kangaroo, and the Volokh Conspiracy, are providing serious, up-to-the-minute critiques of the action. And this war’s Ernie Pyle is embedded not with any Army division but in front of a computer about 7,500 miles from Baghdad. Sean-Paul Kelley is a San Antonio money manager. But in temps de guerre, he’s the Agonist (what a brilliant name!), the commander of a must-read Weblog that constantly links to and culls from a range of the most informed, relevant Websites—and that makes for a pretty good first draft of history. “This happened on the front . . . Al-Jazeera is reporting that . . . Oh, and thanks for sending me that pizza, whoever you are.”
“Mom, I wanna be a blogger” may not have much élan. But it’s where we’re going. At least moms will rest easier.
March 30, 2003
Divide and conquer
: Nick Denton goes to plan B: divide Iraq and conquer, whenever.
 The French Army Knife
: Visual humor, thanks to a German site, IT&W. "I know," he says, "it's politically incorrect -- but funny." Politically incorrect for a German (now that's funny). But it's not politically incorrect here, my friend.
It's not easy being pro-war: a vlog
: I've just done another video post (vlog), this one about being pro-war.
The full text is below.
Normally, I put these on Screenblast but I can't upload to it today. So I'm going to risk putting this on two sets of servers. Since there's not much to see (just me) try the dialup version; if that's too awful, try the others.
Server 1: Real dialup ... Real high-speed ... Windows high-speed
Server 2: Real dialup ... Real high-speed ... Windows high-speed
Transcript: It's not easy being pro-war.
Don't think for a second that I'm enjoying my membership in the Donald Rumsfeld fan club.
In fact, I think that George Bush did a terrible job making the case for this war -- to us and to the world.
Bush screwed up the diplomatic alternative -- and the only thing that saves him is that Jacques Chirac screwed it up worse.
And I'm hardly a hawk. I spent most of my life as a Vietnam-induced pacifist. Thanks to a lucky lottery number -- the only lottery I've ever played -- I never had to choose between Canada and jail. Instead, I went on Moratorium marches. I wore peace signs.
But now I'm wearing the American flag -- and waving an M-16.
And that is because, on September 11th, men fueled by hate tried to kill me and did kill thousands around me just because of who we are -- American -- and who we are not -- Muslim.
I faced evil that day. I met my generation's Hitler. And I soon realized that I had no choice but to support force against such a force.
I'm not saying that Saddam Hussein was responsible for that attack. I'm saying that I lost my pacifism that day and so, I now have to make an honest choice about supporting force or not, supporting the President or not, defeating Saddam or not.
And I've decided that as with Idi Amin, Pol Pot, Slobodan Milosevic, and Adolf Hitler, we bear a responsibility to defeat tyranny and to free its prisoners.
But do not think that I come to this decision with glee. I am torn apart about resorting to sin to fight sin. I miss the apparent moral clarity of my former anti-war confreres. I dislike the moral smugness of my new pro-war confederates. I was appalled the other day when a newspaper called me "conservative" just because I am not anti-war in my weblog.
Do not paint me with your Dr. Strangelove brush. Do not think that by choosing to support this war in Iraq, I am conservative, or bloodthirsty, or happy about it. This was a hard decision.
It's not easy being pro-war. : Gray -- a regular reader from Russia -- posts his response in Russian and English. This is what makes the Internet so f'ing wonderful. This is what will fix the world.
Anti-warism and anti-Semitism
: The Anti-Defamation League released its annual survey of anti-Jewish incidents in the U.S. Note the increase on campuses; note also my earlier post on the ties between anti-warism, anti-Americanism, and anti-Semitism. The ADL stats: A total of 1,559 anti-Jewish incidents were reported against Jews and Jewish institutions in 2002, a slight increase from the 1,432 incidents in 2001. [Ed: I wouldn't call that "slight."]
At the same time, anti-Jewish incidents reported on campus were up by 24 percent in 2002....
Anti-Semitic incidents on campus increased for the third straight year to a total of 106 incidents, an increase by 24 percent over 2001, when 85 acts were reported. Many of the 2002 incidents grew out of anti-Israel or "anti-Zionist" demonstrations or other actions in which some participants engaged in overt expression of anti-Jewish sentiments, including name-calling directed at Jewish students, placards comparing the Star of David to the swastika, or vandalism of Jewish property, such as Hillel buildings. : Meanwhile, in France... Haaretz reports that Jewish communities fear the war will inflame anti-Semitism around the world, especially in France: Some 5,000 policemen and security personnel accompanied the tens of thousands of people participating in an anti-war protest in Paris on Saturday. But unlike the security at other anti-war rallies around the world, which aimed to prevent attacks against United States targets, the French policemen were there to prevent anti-Semitic acts similiar to those that had taken place at previous anti-war rallies in France....
It seems that the anti-war movement in France has become anti-Israel in nature, and the anti-war protests serve as an opportunity for Muslims in France to attack Israel and Jews.
Strategy
: Gen. Tommy Franks said at this morning's briefing that a good strategy assures eventual victory while allowing the possibilty of short-term victory. I'm buying it.
More on the briefing here.
 Saddam's fall
: A former Saddam aide tells Bild in Germany that Saddam will escape within two weeks (link in English). Meanwhile, Bild has some fun suggesting Saddam will dress up as a G.I. to escape (Translation: Saddam's escape plan: Is Saddam disguising himself as a U.S. soldier?).
And while we're at it, Bild also compares Saddam's Republican Guard to Hitler's SS. (Links in German)
Bloghdad
: Greg Allen got the domain Bloghdad.com and he has been wondering what to do with it. He finds my use of the word to be the first. So may I make a suggestion? When Salam Pax is liberated, give it to him, for he is the true Bloghdad blogger.
Inside Basra
: A British reporter -- exhibiting the kind of stupid bravery reporters are born with -- ventures into Basra for the Telegraph. The younger men look sullen and angry. Few speak English but one, his face streaked with dust and dirt, holds up a fist, brandishing it above his head. An older man speaks angrily to him, pulling his hand down. The young man's eyes smoulder with hatred. "Enemy," is all he can say in English.
Earlier last week, British special forces are said to have deployed in Basra. "It's a living hell in there," I am told by one military official who is believed to have operated alongside them.
"People are too afraid to come out of their homes. They don't know who is friend, who is foe. Water and food is scarce, there is no electricity. No one is starving yet, but supplies are running very, very low."...
We find two teenage boys who have not seen their father, a soldier, for two nights, since his unit moved to the south of the city at dawn on Thursday. Their mother died in November and now they are fending for themselves in the basement of what was once a family home....
Inside one doorway, a family sits huddled around a small fire. Short planks are burning, wood that they have clearly pulled from their window frames. Inside the house, on the wall behind them, hangs the only ornament - a framed photograph of Saddam Hussein, in paternal pose.
No one speaks. Their gaze is neither angry nor welcoming; it is instead a long, lingering look, perhaps of resignation. Bundles of clothes lie in the corners and a stack of tomatoes and eggs nestles in a recess that may once have been a fireplace. They slam the door shut....
[At a British checkpoint outside the city...] As he checks vehicles, L/Cpl Ryan Robinson reaches inside one to calm a sobbing mother. "We need to help these people, to reassure them," he says, clearly moved by their plight. "They are scared of everyone - fear is their norm now."
Over there
: We keep hearing about the radically different Arab perspective being broadcast on Arab TV but, of course, we don't get to see that for ourselves.
In the English-language Arab press, there are occasional glimpses of that perspective. Take this from the Jordan Times: Eyes fixed upon the images of the Iraq war flickering across the television, Musa Tawil (Abu Hamed), 58, from Hitteen refugee camp said he would rather be oppressed by harsh leadership than accept the will of an invading foreign force.
For the embittered Abu Hamed, displaced from his home in Palestine in the wake of the 1967 Arab-Israeli war, the current aggression against Iraq is part of a pattern of aggression he knows only too well.
“This war is not justified on any grounds. It is pure and simple aggression. It is an injustice on a people living on their own soil,” he exclaimed while sitting on a mattress beside his wife and grandchild.
While he said it is true that Saddam Hussein is not an ideal leader, Abu Hamed believes his presence does not justify the use of “such overwhelming force” by the US and the UK.
Tuning into one of the two Arabic stations available to him, Abu Hamed said his resentment of the situation grows because he sees still more injustice being put upon the already suffering Iraqi people.
March 29, 2003
A rose by any other name...
: Oh, gawd, I knew we'd regret ever calling this warblogging after 9.11.
Now we have "peaceblogging."
I'm just waiting for somebody to then try to rename warblogging, oh, I dunno... libertyblogging or freedomblogging or some such.
As my father says (the second time I've quoted him today): Let's not and say we did.
It's warblogging as in blogging about war. The term came after 9.11. Then everybody was for war against the people warring with us, right? Remember those days?
The Battle for Baghdad: MOUT
: There's some sobering reading on a huge Army site dedicated to MOUT -- Military Operations on Urbanized Terrain, aka door-to-door urban warfare, aka the battle for Baghdad.
More than one article there starts with the quote from Sun Tsu in the Art of war: Best policy in war--thwart the enemy's strategy,
second best--disrupt his alliances through diplomacy,
third best--attack his army in the field,
worst strategy--attack walled cities. There are many papers about the fighting in Grozny, hardly a model for what we need to accomplish in Baghdad (i.e., we don't really want to level the place and still lose). And there are many lessons learned from Stalingrad, Somalia, Hue, Beirut, Belfast, and even the L.A. riots.
One policy paper says: Urban areas pose significant force protection problems. The nature of urban terrain decentralizes and channelizes friendly forces, while adversaries engage a variety of targets — friendly forces, infrastructure, and noncombatants — behind the shield of the civilian population. Commanders must make thorough risk assessments, develop appropriate rules of engagement, implement strict antiterrorist measures, and execute well-designed deception plans to prepare for these problems. This paper lists the scary characteristics of urban warfare: : Cities reduce the advantages of the technologically superior force.
: Ground operations become manpower intensive.
: Ground operations become decentralize.
: Operations are time-consuming.
: Urban areas provide advantages to defenders, insurgents, and terrorists.
: Logistic support requirements are different and often more demanding in urban
areas.... Look at this chart and you can see clearly why Saddam wants to draw us into Baghdad and Basra and why we want to either fight in the desert to bomb targets in the cities.
Another paper looks at the urban-warfare lessons Iraq itself learned in its war with Iran. They learned precisely how hard door-to-door fighting is and that is why they would lure us into it. Iraqi losses in the city of Khorramshar were so great they renamed it "Khunishar, The City of Blood." This paper concludes: Is successful MOUT in Iraq possible? It is, but this depends on the way the population responds to the presence of US or coalition troops. If the population turns against Hussein, anything is possible and MOUT becomes feasible. If they do not, US or coalition forces will be confronted with the worst kind of city fighting, that of not only the armed forces but also the people of Iraq. Or as David Galbraith said today:"What is clear, however, is that everything hinges on an uprising." [MOUT via Derek Willis]
: Related: RAND publications on urban warfare.
: And get a load of this Rand study: Members of RAND's urban operations team are analyzing deception in the animal and plant kingdoms to see how the domains of animal biology and behavior can teach further lessons in the military domain, specifically in urban operations. : See also Saddam's strategy, below.
Future war
: Continuing the thread above, I come across a piece from the Army War College about the urban warrior of 2025.
More sobering words about today: Current Army doctrine largely ignores the urban environment except within the context of small-scale stability and support operations. When it does address it, existing doctrine primarily examines the tactical level of warfare and presents urban conflict essentially as a series of small-unit combat actions designed to seize individual rooms and buildings. Little attention is given to the conduct of large-scale land operations on complex urban terrain or to the joint, coalition, and interagency integration requirements associated with it. Note this, too, about the current tactical debate clearly going on over Baghdad: The first option, and that which senior military officers have shown a special predilection toward in recent Army After Next wargames, is to avoid contesting for the cities altogether. To this way of thinking, US forces should seek to engage the enemy in open terrain where our technological superiority gives us an overwhelming advantage. Unfortunately, this option inhibits the ability of US forces to bring a military campaign to rapid conclusion and allows the enemy just the type of refuge he was seeking when he chose to enter the city. The enemy has control of the city and he is spared attacks from US forces.
An alternative option described as the "indirect approach" has recently been proposed by Major General Robert Scales. This approach requires the establishment of a loose cordon, or siege line, around an enemy-occupied city. Though rarely, or even never, actually entering the city, US and coalition forces would use precision weapons "to strike selected point targets, key leadership, and weapons of mass destruction" within the surrounded city. Eventually, the city would collapse upon the enemy, thereby causing his defeat. The piece also paints a picture of the robowarrior of the future. the 2025 Urban Warfighter System must be a revolutionary new man-machine fighting system with self-contained C4ISR [command, control, communications, computers, intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance], lethality, mobility, survivability, and sustainability far exceeding those of the current and near-term systems. It's fascinating and frightening reading.
  Sand storm
: Sand stars on the covers of The Economist and Der Spiegel, but with different perspectives. The Economist says: "The regime has not collapsed at once. Apart from that, the war against Iraq is going well." Der Spiegel says: "Superpower in the Sand. America's Stalled Blitzkrieg."
Ew, Canada
: Aaron Bailey sums up all the news from the land that never makes news, Canada.
: Add this: Thousands at pro-American demo.
: And this: Chrétien loses points in polls; nation deeply divided over war.
Buy me!
: If I could figure out the subtleties of this site, I'd actually make money on the stock market and I wouldn't have to work and I could blog all day long. Or as my father would say, "If a frog had wings, he wouldn't bump his ass everytime he flies." I never understood that, either.
Anyway, Blogshares lets you trade fantasy shares on blogs, which are valued based on their links.
If nothing else, a new game involving Blogs and ego is a sure way to get lots of links, just like this. [via Martin Devon]
Matching bets
: Steven Johnson suggests that countries that we should put up "matching grants" for Iraq to spend as much on rebuilding as we spend on bombs.
I'll bet that by the time we're done, we'll be more than matching.
Dum Poetry Jam
: Announcing Not In Our Name Music with some really bad rap against the war -- but, hey, it's free. Among the catchy ditties: Pledge of Resistance. [via Mosaikum]
What, France worry?
: France has a terror alert system. Why? Don't they befriend terrorists? (Oh, come on, take a joke.)
They just upgraded the terror alert system to the American multicolor model: yellow, orange, red, scarlet (of course, they'd use a fancy color, they're French!).
Merde in France suggests a different palate based on the weather in Paris: light gray, gray, dark gray, and soot black.
Or may I suggest: Yellow, Yellower, Yellowest, and Sacre Blue.
: Update: Dan Hon has lots of French updates.
Iraqi Idol!
: Via Adam Curry, Iraqi Idol, the TV show. ALL NEW EXECUTIONS!!!
See what happens when Simon, Saddam, and others think you suck! Click here for execution photos!
War swag
: You can buy Iraqi souvenirs on eBay, of course: Iraqi money with Saddam's mug.. Desert Storm patches... and more. [from Netzeitung]
Ha....Ha....Ha.....
: Somebody with a sense of humor at Fox: Fox News had its own response to the demonstrators. The news ticker rimming Fox's headquarters on Sixth Avenue wasn't carrying war updates as the protest began. Instead, it poked fun at the demonstrators, chiding them.
"War protester auditions here today ... thanks for coming!" read one message. "Who won your right to show up here today?" another questioned. "Protesters or soldiers?"
Said a third: "How do you keep a war protester in suspense? Ignore them."
Still another read: "Attention protesters: the Michael Moore Fan Club meets Thursday at a phone booth at Sixth Avenue and 50th Street" - a reference to the film maker who denounced the war while accepting an Oscar on Sunday night for his documentary "Bowling for Columbine."
The protesters said Fox's sentiments only proved their point: that media coverage, in particular among the television networks, is so biased as to be unbelievable. [via Medien Kontor]
Pope speaks
: He says: Pope John Paul has said he hopes the war in Iraq will not set Christians and Muslims against each other. Hmmm. Think that horse may have left the barn about a year and a half ago?
Go, girl!
: Somebody let Julie Burchill out of her cage and I'm glad. She takes on Susan Sarandon: I've just heard a snippet of the most disgustingly me-me-me anti-war advert by Susan Sarandon, in which she intones, "Before our kids start coming home from Iraq in body bags, and women and children start dying in Baghdad, I need to know - what did Iraq do to us?" Well, if you mean what did Saddam do to America The Beautiful, not an awful lot - but to millions of his own people, torture and murder for a start. Don't they count?
Surely this is the most self-obsessed anti-war protest ever. NOT IN MY NAME! That's the giveaway. Who gives a stuff about their wet, white, western names? See how they write them so solemnly in a list on the bottom of the letters they send to the papers. And the ones that add their brats' names are the worst - a grotesque spin on Baby On Board, except they think that this gives them extra humanity points not just on the motorway, but in the whole wide weeping, striving, yearning world. We don't know the precious names of the countless numbers Saddam has killed. We're talking about a people - lots of them parents - subjected to an endless vista of death and torture, a country in which freedom can never be won without help from outside. It would probably be better if I let it stand there: a powerful statement.
But then Burchill continues to make fun of stars and I can't resist that fun: ...is it a total coincidence that those stars most prominent in the anti-war movement are the most notoriously "difficult"and vain - Streisand, Albarn, Michael, Madonna, Sean Penn?...
Anti-war nuts suffer from the usual mixture of egotism and self-loathing that often characterises recreational depression - an unholy alliance of Oprahism and Meldrewism in which you think you're scum, but also that you're terribly important, too....
What these supreme egotists achieve by putting themselves at the centre of every crisis is to make the Iraqi people effectively disappear. NOT IN MY NAME! is western imperialism of the sneakiest sort, putting our clean hands before the freedom of an enslaved people. But even those whose anti-war protests started in good faith now know that when Saddam's regime comes tumbling down, thousands of Iraqis will dance and sing with joy before the TV cameras, and thank our armed forces for giving them back their lives.
How embarrassing it will be for the peaceniks to have to explain to the celebrants how much better it would have been for them never to have been troubled by such joy!
Michael Moore, political arsonist
: Michael Moore is really going over the edge. Variety reports on his next movie:
The project will depict the allegedly murky relationship between President Bush's father and the family of Osama bin Laden. And it will suggest that the bin Laden family was greatly enriched by that association.
Moore is making a deal with Mel Gibson's Icon Prods. to finance "Fahrenheit 911," a documentary that will trace why the U.S. has become a target for hatred and terrorism. It will also depict alleged dealings between two generations of the Bush and bin Laden clans that led to George W. Bush and Osama bin Laden becoming mortal enemies....
"The primary thrust of the new film is what has happened to the country since Sept. 11, and how the Bush administration used this tragic event to push its agenda," Moore said. "It certainly does deal with the Bush and bin Laden ties. It asks a number of questions that I don't have the answers to yet, but which I intend to find out."...
We all know crisis queens. Moore is a controversy queen.
Double negatives
: I don't make fun of Moore because he's against the war. I make fun of him because he's so make-funnable.
I just found his piece about his Oscar speech in which he argues that the boos weren't directed against him: ...before I had finished my first sentence about the fictitious president, a couple of men (some reported it was "stagehands" just to the left of me) near a microphone started some loud yelling. Then a group in the upper balcony joined in. What was so confusing to me, as I continued my remarks, was that I could hear this noise but, looking out on the main floor, I didn't see a single person booing.
But then the majority in the balcony – who were in support of my remarks – started booing the booers. : See also Jim Treacher, who's seen the light thanks to Michael Moore and now knows how this war should end. [via au Currant]
Saddam's military strategy: delay
: The Scottsman argues that Saddam's entire strategy is -- shades of Vietnam -- delaying our progress to make us more unpopular. Despite the US’s unchallenged military strength, its criteria for success are more readily assailable: it requires few casualties, a swift campaign, no use of weapons of mass destruction (WMD), no exporting the conflict to the rest of the region (especially Israel) and, perhaps most importantly, the approval of Iraqi civilians to bestow retroactive legitimacy on the war in the absence of a second UN resolution.
Saddam might not yet have played the WMD or Israel wildcards, but his strategy appears predicated upon trumping the Americans in every other one of these areas....
The nature of this resistance suggests that Saddam has learnt from his mistakes of 1991 and has adapted his tactics accordingly. Like all good revolutionaries, Saddam understands that guerrilla warfare can be maintained almost indefinitely: a drawn-out conflict will cause maximum difficulty for Mr Bush, whose domestic support will wane should the war prove too costly in terms of lives, time or budget.
No doubt encouraged by the anti-war demonstrations across Europe and the US, Saddam knows both that this war is unpopular and that western leaders are hostage to public opinion in a way he is not.
Incapable of defeating the US militarily and of stepping down from power to forestall a fully-fledged attack on the capital, Saddam has only one real route of escape: to make the war so politically costly to the US that it is obliged to withdraw.
What we will see in the next stage is a tug of war - George Bush will race for Baghdad and Saddam Hussein will seek to slow him down. The next phase of the war is not really about controlling territory, then, it is about controlling time. Which is also to say that all the talk about this less-than-two-week-old war going slowly only plays into Saddam's hands. [via the Christian Science Monitor]
Bon temps my ass
: Our correspondent in New Orleans reports much fun over Jacques Chirac down in Louisiana: It is, if you don't know, the Louisiana Purchase Bicentennial. On Dec. 20, there is to be a climactic ceremony in Jackson Square, in which Presidents Bush & Chirac are supposed to kiss each other's cheeks and get all gooshy.
The thought of which sickens good ol' boys everywhere.
So my boy State Rep. Almond Gaston Crowe, of Crowley, is filing legislation to UN-invite the head Frog from attending the event. Not to be outdone, a credible contender for this year's governor's race has jumped on the bandwagon. And yesterday, Gov. Mike "Duckblind" Foster opined on radio that he may beat 'em all to the punch and do it by executive order. We like Mike. The first thing that pops up on the gov's homepage, in fact, is a poll asking Louisianans about dissing Chirac . . . last I looked, 54 percent want him disinvited. I suspect a high percentage of the other 46 percent is from frantic poll-stuffing by the state tourism board and the Bicentennial Commission, which is freaking out that their premiere event of 2003 is going down in flames. See the original Times-Picayune story on Nola.com here.
: Update: A French trade delegation canceled a trip to New Orleans next month.
March 28, 2003
News sources
: A Magid survey shows where people are going for war news: 45 percent go for to cable news, 22 percent to network news, 20 to local TV news, and 11 to other media.
Where do they go next? Mix up the results above and then the Internet comes above newspapers.
The audience is demanding immediacy. [via Live Remote]
: Meanwhile, 42 percent of viewers in another survey said that war coverage tired them out and 58 percent found it frightening to watch.
: Imagine how many will be frightened by French Network News....
Troop buildup
: So some are giving Rumsfeld grief for the speed of the troop buildup in Iraq: from 90,000 in week one to 120,000 in week two, to 200,000 in short order.
In Vietnam, it took from 1950 to 1965 to get to 184,000 troops -- and, of course, many said that was too damned fast.
I want my Frog TV
: I'm surprised I haven't seen more blog levity over this: Jacques Chirac asking for media companies to propose starting a French news channel: snail TV.
Fine, Yankee goes home
: The South Koreans are getting snarky about our presence and about our war in Iraq.
Some are making noises about taking our troops out of Korea and sending them to Iraq. "Will General Tommy Franks suddenly `discover' that he needs the Second Infantry Division in Iraq?" said Robyn Lim, a conservative foreign affairs professor based in Japan, referring to the front-line American troops here. "In crying `Yankee go home!' South Koreans should have been more careful about what they asked for."
In a poll conducted last month, a pullout of American soldiers was favored by 68.4 percent of 2,154 South Korean adults interviewed by Fn Research and Consulting, an affiliate of a business newspaper here. We spent decades protecting South Korea from North Korea and they want us out and refuse to support our fight. We gave them our sitcoms and this is how they treat us?
Perhaps they'd prefer to starve under a nutso porno dictator.
Water finding its own level
: A new Zogby poll finds different levels of support for the war among viewers of at least two networks: Pollster John Zogby said his research shows that of Fox viewers, 68 percent are strongly in support of the war. Of NBC watchers, the figure of those who are in strong support is closer to 40 percent. It's what I said in a post below: People will start seeking viewpoints that agree with their own (as newspapers readers do in Britain and elsewhere in Europe). [via IWantMedia]
New blogs
: Jewsweek has a blog.
So does Gary Hart (well, I think it will qualify once it gets more than one post).
CNN
: I've been offline at the gut of the day because I was doing an interview on blogs with Jeff Greenfield of CNN. Will probably be on Monday. Will let you know.
Blix talks
: Hans Blix talks to the Guardian about hanging up his canary: "While we were disappointed that it didn't continue and that it came to war, I think we have shown that it was feasible to build up a professional and effective and independent inspection regime... it's just too bad it didn't work."
Grapes of wrath
: So I was talking to a CNN producer and wine fan about the war and this French thing and he has a secret hope: That the price of good wine will come down. Somebody start a futures index.
At last!
: Some good news: The first aid ship arrives at Umm Qasr.
The media war
: Michael Wolff, New York Magazine's media man, files his column from Qatar early. I've been waiting for this: caustic Wolff embedded in the press corps, wolff in the hen house.
But he ends up with a nonstory about a nonstory.
He complains that there's no news at the news center at Centcom.
As Gomer Pyle, USMC, would say: Surprise, surprise, surprise!
Of course, there's no news there. For one thing, there's no war there; it's many sand dunes away in Iraq. For another, this is where the generals are, not the soldiers. And for another, this is the military, filled with armed control freaks.
Wolff got applause at yesterday's Centcom briefing when he complained about no news in the briefing (a theme begun the day before by other correspondents). From the briefing transcript: WOLFF: We're no longer being briefed by senior-most officers. To the extent that we get information, it's largely information already released by the Pentagon.... So I guess my question is, why should we stay? What's the value to us for what we learn at this million-dollar press center? (Applause.)
GEN. BROOKS: I've gotten applause already. That's wonderful. I appreciate that.
First, I would say it's your choice. We want to provide information that's truthful from the operational headquarters that is running this war. There are a number of places where information is available, not the least of which would be the embedded media. And they tell a very important story. The Pentagon has a set of information they provide as well. If you're looking for the entire mosaic, then you should be here.
I think some of you may have been, based on the questions yesterday, looking for very, very precise information about the operations. And we'll give you that as we can. But we should never forget, the more we tell you, if we're precise about the frontline trace and where units are operating, exactly what our strength is, you're not the only one being informed.... From which we learn that the Pentagon now has excellent courses in PR.
But this is nothing new. Don't we all remember the fabled Five O'Clock Follies of Vietnam; those briefings became the subject of not only complaint but also lampoons.
But it's not just the military. Any press briefing is, by definition, controlled. It's not about reporting. It's about a message being spoonfed. It's a press release.
Same thing at a White House press briefing. Nobody's going to get a scoop from Ari in the auditorium; you're going to get what Ari want to tell you. Even though Ari and various generals are now on live TV, they don't want to give us an exciting show. They want to give us their message.
If you want to report, get the hell out of the press briefing and get out where the action is. Thank goodness, the Pentagon is now allowing that to happen with the embedded reporters.
If you're a media reporter, Mr. Wolff, then you should get your butt back to New York and watch what we're watching because I'm eager to hear your take on it all.
You'll learn a lot more in front of a TV here than in front of a camera there.
Fog of media war
: And here is the problem with instantaneous reporting: Sometimes it takes awhile for the facts to catch up.
The BBC catalogues the incidents of big stories that turned out to be smaller: columns of tanks that turn into trickles of tanks, uprisings that don't rise up much. [Former BBC reporter and now British MP] Martin Bell blames the recent confusion on the "excitability" of editors of rolling television news stations.
They are under pressure to give the television war junkies something fresh to keep them hooked.
Some "report rumour as fact", Mr Bell says....
The Iraq war is a media war like never before.
Military training courses around the world attach increasing importance to public relations.
Martin Bell says the best way of cutting through the "fog of war" is to return to journalistic basics: be sceptical.
And this applies to those watching the war on their computers and TV screens, as much as the reporters putting it there. : The BBC admits making daily mistakes in war coverage. No news there. Of course, mistakes will be made.
March 27, 2003
al-Jazeera pay-per-view
: You can now watch al-Jazeera -- but you have to pay. Ish.com, the German service that had been streaming it, just put up a pay gate (via German company Firstgate.com): .10 Euros per minute. I just spent 30 cents watching the U.S. ambassador walk out on Iraq's ambassador at the U.N.
Worth it.
Pixelated media... grainy reality... low-res news
: Not only is the world changing in this war, news is.
And technology is changing it.
Watch TV news now and you see grainy, pixelated, jumpy, low-res images that would have been cause for dismissal for a network producer only a year or two ago. But now these images from the front imply immediacy, even credibility: They look real, they look now, they look like news.
Now add to this the fact that reporters -- and now even members of the audience -- can carry the devices that create those images. If I had carried a phone with a camera attached and text-messaging capabilities on September 11th, I would have been reporting (or you can call it blogging) to the world.
Now add one more factor -- the always-connected, international, everywhere network in which we now live -- and you have the shape of news to come: from anywhere to anywhere anytime by anybody.
Oh, but there's one more dimension to add: opinion. People will pick their spin. In Britain, people pick the Mirror or the Sun (or the Times or the Guardian). That doesn't happen in a one-outlet local market. But it does happen in a diverse national market, like Britain, and it will happen in a diverse nanomedia market, with weblogs.
So we'll get more news from more sources and more perspectives, more up-to-the-minute with more reality from the scene and more perspective later.
I like that picture.
(So does Corey Bergman, a local TV guru who created the wonderful weblog Lost Remote and who wrote about all this for OJR).
Ew, Canada
: Christie Blatchford, a well-known Canadian columnist, says Canada didn't have to send bombs, only words of support, to avoid seeing its relationship with its testy neighbor to the south deteriorate. [via Blogs of War] Canada did not have to grab a chair and crack it over the head of the guy her American pal was pummelling in the bar, she had only to refrain from actively cheering the other fellow on -- oh, and maybe buy the Yank a drink when the mess was over.
It is this national failure of nerve that is, as the modern lingo has it, the root cause of the wildly deteriorating state of relations between the two countries; why the U.S. ambassador to Canada, Paul Cellucci, said what he said this week (and why Mr. Bush, his close personal friend, gave him the go-ahead to do so) and why it now appears Mr. Bush's first visit to Ottawa, slated for this spring, may be in jeopardy.
Bush supporter
: It's a photo gag from Blogs of War. Ya have to be there.
Sour
: Instapundit points us to a parody of a parody: The Lemon. A promo I liked: "Paul Krugman thinks your idea is stupid." I also liked the nice link here. Flattery will get you everywhere.
Ew, Canada
: Glenn Reynolds is gratified that Canada's House of Commons just voted to try Saddam Hussein for war crimes.
I'd be more gratified if Canada put its moxie where its mouth is and sent troops over there to help us bring him to justice, eh?
Netpolitik
: Instapundit and I both blogged this Times of London column about a new world order that begins now. All the old alliances are out-of-date -- the U.N. cut off its own arms and legs; NATO's job is done; America and Britain "reconcile," in Blair's word, their relationships with Europe; Russia plays with France and Germany and will live to regret it; Eastern Europe comes into its own; the Middle East is up for grabs; America sees a global role for itself...
Change is unsettling and this is big change.
It needs a name, this momentous new era of ours. It's not a cold war. It's not ostpolitik or realpolitik.
It's all about alliances of convenience and need and the moment.
It's a world that starts to look like an Internet router, which finds the best route for the moment and then forgets it and finds the best route the next time.
This is the era, then, of what:
Network diplomacy?
: Alex proposes Neopolitik in the comments. (But what I really like in his comment is my new nickname: Buzz.)
: A variant: Netpolitik. It's all about networks and networks change; they plug into and out of each other. I'm liking that one: The era of netpolitik. Nice ring, eh?
Liberation theology
: An provocative exchange is beginning on Ibidem, a blog from Spain, regarding liberation theology, a liberal religious cause of the '60s and since. It usually comes in the context of opression and poverty in Latin America. But a commenter on this blog quotes Irish theologian Seamus Murphy SJ, who brings liberation theology into the context of Iraq and the Vatican's opposition to the war there: In Latin America in the 1960s, there emerged a way of doing theology known as the 'theology of liberation'. Its focus was the poor and the oppressed, its starting-point was their experience, and its inspiration was the God revealed in the story of the people of Israel.
God, the merciful and the compassionate, is a God of justice on the side of the oppressed, and his plan of salvation unfolds in their struggle for liberation....
Liberation theology focuses on the story of the people of Iraq, rather than on abstract philosophical and legal categories....
Since 1968, Iraqis have lived under a brutal dictatorship where the oppression and fear is far worse than any reported from Latin America, as UN and Amnesty International reports show. Since 1979, some 200,000 Iraqis have been murdered in prison. Far more have been tortured....
While liberation theology does not encourage violence, it acknowledges the right of people to defend themselves against murderous repression. Uprisings by Kurds and Shi'ites in 1987-89 and in 1991 were put down in large-scale massacres, sometimes with chemical weapons. If they were to rise again, they would have the world's sympathy. Liberation theology would say that the Lord, who breaks the rod of the oppressor, was with them. But unaided rebellion would have no prospect of success, and our bystander sympathy, our distant indignation (if we even noticed) would not prevent it being crushed with great slaughter....
But, sadly, Christian solidarity with them is overwhelmed by pacifism, neutralism, and anti-Americanism....
Liberation theology would say: God is with the victims, and failure to stand in solidarity with them is a betrayal of the Gospel.
Ho-Ho-Ho
: I'm listening to Today this morning and here Katie say, Oh, war protestors outside our window.
The "die-in" had begun.
WSNBC has a story and video. Tiny crowd or mere irritants. Hundreds of chanting anti-war protesters lined Fifth Avenue on Thursday and dozens rushed into the street and lay down at the beginning of a series of civil disobedience actions planned for throughout the day....
Anti-war groups had called for a day of widespread civil disobedience, including blocking busy intersections and a "die-in" to protest media and corporate "profiteering from the war."
As helicopters hovered overhead, the protesters -- chanting "Hey-hey, ho-ho, Bush's war has to go" and "Peace Now!" -- jammed police pens along Fifth Avenue between 49th and 50th streets, near St. Patrick's Cathedral and the Sak's Fifth Avenue store.
Confessions of a war blogger
: I wrote a story for the Star-Ledger about war blogging to try to explain the phenom and how it's done. The story is here; a list of links is here. I am a warblogger.
If that sounds like the confession of an addiction, it is. For since war in Iraq began, I have been compulsively reading – and writing – warblogs, which is short for war weblogs, which simply means web pages that link to the latest and best coverage of the war from anywhere in the world, often with personal commentary.
Thanks to these warblogs, I read the news the night before I hear Katie and Matt read it to me on Today. I find unusual sources of information – news reports direct from Kuwait or Israel; opinion from Kurdish commentators or Saudi columnists; and video from the front. And I hear the buzz, what people are saying about the war – pro and anti – in America, Europe, and the Middle East. : Lots of new posts this morning over at my warblog.
The Iraqi Vegas
: Lt. Smash has a great anecdote from the front, talking to locals about the liberation of Umm Qasr: “Sir, is it true,” they asked me, “is Umm Qasr secured?”
“That’s what he said.”
“Can we go there?” This puzzled me.
“Why would you want to go there?”
“Dancing girls! Beer!”
Then it hit me – Umm Qasr is a border town. For these men, it holds memories of a different time, a time before war, when they could travel freely to Iraq, and do all the things not allowed in their own country.
Umm Qasr is their Tijuana.
March 26, 2003
Censorship or just bad PR?
: It's churlish and short-sighted for the two stock exchanges to kick Al-Jazeera off the floor. We're America. We believe in free speech for all. We should demonstrate that, especially from the very capitals of capitalism.
Just-in-time troops
: The U.S. is calling up 30,000 more troops from Ft. Hood.
I know a Marine who has been sitting in the U.S. waiting to go over (frustrated and with morale drooping).
And so it becomes clear that the Pentagon does not only have a new just-in-time supply chain (as I've heard radio reporting) but also a new just-in-time troop train. People have been asking whether we have enough soldiers in Iraq. The Pentagon has been stonewalling (remember that quaint phrase) the question. That's because they don't want to have to ship over the supplies for soldiers who will sit and wait; they'd rather just wait to ship them over with their supplies.
50 Most Loathsome...
: Gawker is making hay (is that something you can do in New York) with the NY Press 50 Most Loathsome New Yorkers list here and here. I'm smelling a meme, folks:
: 50 Most Loathsome Hollywood stars (Michael Moore, Barbra Streisand, Tim Robbins, Susan Sarandon, Janine Garofalo...)
: 50 Most Loathsome Frenchmen (Jacques Chirac...)
: 50 Most Loathsome Arab Leaders (over to you, LGF...)
: 50 Most Loathsome Remnants of the Bubble (Tony Perkins...)
Yup, this could be fun.
Oh, General, you're soooo hot!
: The Guardian -- quoting a Berkeley prof -- says that all this talk of military hardware (emphasis on the hard) is war porn: War porn is everywhere and lots of people, men and women both, have found themselves responding to it.
"As a scholar of porn, I look at this and say 'these are boys with phallic toys'," sighs Linda Williams, professor of film studies and rhetoric at UC Berkley. It's not a new observation, but what is new, is the extent to which it is amplified by technology. "CNN have this special thing they do whenever they introduce a new weapon. It reminds me of the way athletes are introduced in coverage of the Olympics: a little inset comes out with their bio and stats. This weapon they had just now was something called the AC130H-Spectre - some dreadful machine - it came flying out and turned this way and that so that you could see it from all angles." (A similar thing happens on ITN: "It's amazing to see the Abrams tank and we've put together a little fact file.") "This," says Williams, "is the kind of spectacular vision you get in porn - where the point is to see the sex act from every angle. It's narcissistic; boys getting together admiring their toys. It is about us proudly displaying our weapons and there is something sexual about that." Naw. Naw, doesn't cut it.
I'll refrain from making mention of particularly attractive TV war babes. That would be wrong. Normal, but wrong.
Dosvidanya
: I love seeing myself translated into Russian (even if it is to disagree with me). This web, it's worldwide, damnit.
Remember France?
: I see that NewsMax is not only spamming us with Boycott France popunder ads, they're now placing Boycott France ads in at least the New York Times.
That fight is so old already it's out.
France is so... so... pre-war.
Citizen on the street
: Amy Langfield and Jim Lowney do some person-on-the-street interviews about the war.
The International Association to Protect Tyrant's Flacks
: The International Federal of Journalists (don't ask me, I sure don't belong) just issued a statement condemning the U.S. taking out Iraqi TV: The head of the world's biggest journalists' organisation says a U.S. bomb and missile attack on Iraqi television was an attempt at censorship and may have breached the Geneva Conventions.
"I think there should be a clear international investigation into whether or not this bombing violates the Geneva Conventions," Aidan White, general secretary of the International Federation of Journalists (IFJ), told Reuters on Wednesday.
"We have every reason to believe this is an act of censorship against media that U.S. politicians and military strategists don't like," he said. Now that's absurd -- as if Iraqi TV remotely resembles anything journalistic or has the slightest thing to do with free speech. [via Lost Remote]
: Now Amnesty International is name-dropping "Geneva Convention" in this context. Amnesty International said that the bombing could be a breach of the Geneva Conventions. "The bombing of a television station, simply because it is being used for the purposes of propaganda, cannot be condoned. It is a civilian object, and thus protected under international humanitarian law," it said.
"To justify such an attack, coalition forces would have to show that the TV station was being used for military purposes, and that the attack properly balanced the concrete and direct military advantage anticipated with the incidental risk to civilian life", Claudio Cordone, Amnesty's director for international law, added. It's just too easy, a softball, not even worth the effort....
Reuters watch
: I hadn't seen any questionable Reuters wording as we have seen since 9/11 ("terrorist" or "freedom fighter," we'll decide).
I just saw my first of this war: a headline on the site:
Confusion, Fear in First 'Liberated' Iraqi Town
Note the quotes around "liberated."
Yes, now they shall live under the yoke of democracy.
Respect
: Glenn Reynolds and Mickey Kaus were on NPR this morning. What I find notable is that -- at least in what I heard -- they didn't make a big deal of these guys being creatures of some strange new breed of beast called the blogger. They just referred to them as popular Internet columnists.
Yup, it's just content, folks.
Civilian casualties
: Denton has his dander up over Arab press "hysteria" over 15 reported civilian casualties in a Baghdad market (though it's still not clear whether those deaths came from a U.S. missile or Iraqi anti-aircraft what-goes-up-must-come-down incidents): Hell, 15 dead: that's a quiet day in the Arab world. Even imagining the United States was targeting civilians, its efforts are laughable compared with Saddam -- 5,000 dead in the chemical attack on Halabja in one day -- or Assad -- 30,000 shelled to death in Hama -- or pretty much any other Arab ruler. Arab governments -- and their press and public -- should first practice moral judgment on themselves and eachother, before turning their outrage on the United States. And, before they complain about a new hectoring colonialism, they should first show they're capable of governing themselves by some means other than torture and massacre.
How we treat prisoners
: The 18 Afghanis freed from Guantanamo Bay talk about their captivity: Seated cross-legged on a floor of the Kabul Police Department jail yesterday, nearly all of the former detainees enthusiastically praised the conditions at Guantanamo and expressed little bitterness about losing a year of their lives in captivity, saying they were treated better there than in three days in squalid cells in Kabul. None complained of torture during questioning or coerced confessions.
After they were set free, however, two men who had remained silent earlier hesitantly began to recount being punished for protesting indignities to their captors. The two both admitted to having been employed by the Taliban as drivers....
''The conditions were even better than our homes. We were given three meals a day -- eggs in the morning and meat twice a day; facilities to wash, and if we didn't wash, they'd wash us; and there was even entertainment with video games,'' said Sirajuddin, 24, a taxi driver from Kandahar, the birthplace of the Taliban. He said he was forcibly conscripted by the militia and captured by a notorious warlord, General Abdul Rashid Dostum, who ''sold us to the US.''
Before Kabul jail authorities told the men that they would be released, Sirajuddin said: ''The conditions here are worse than terrible. If we are to be imprisoned, I want to go back to Guantanamo,'' he said, banging on a table.
Murtaza, 28, of southern Helmand province, was one of two who said they had received bad treatment. A driver for the Taliban who also fought as a soldier, his problems at Guantanamo began, he said, when he protested the confiscation of his Koran. US guards piled everyone's copies on the floor and then sat on them, he said....
March 25, 2003
15 seconds of fame
: I keep scolding Nick Denton for not bragging more about Gawker on Gawker -- think tabloid, I keep saying; he ignores me. So I had to find out somewhere else that the Observer profiled Gawker and its wonderful editrix, Elizabeth Spiers.
Overhead
: Considering how crash-prone our military helicopters are, I have to say I'm a little worried about them flying over New York now. But I worry.
Mars
: David Bloom of NBC has been doing an utterly remarkable job reporting with the Third Infantry. Tonight on Dateline, he took us inside the sandstorm battering Iraq. We see the sky turn brown. Then the very air turns red, like a bad movie set on Mars. Then it turns black at 4:30 in the afternoon. Bloom uses light sticks to illuminate his face for the camera. Then thunder and rain clean the air and it's merely beige. Click here and then click on "inside the sandstorm" to watch.
Ew, Canada
: The U.S. ambassador in Ottawa scolded Canada for not helping in Iraq.
: The National Post said Canadians didn't get a chance to express their views on the war before PM Jean Chrétien decided not to join the coalition in the war, and so the paper invited letters and put them online and they are scathing about their own country. A sampling: : Where Canada was once a proud nation, willing to fight for the things we cherish, we are now a nation confined to the sidelines, standing for nothing.
: These past few weeks have made it very difficult to be a proud Canadian. After witnessing the fans at the Bell Centre in Montreal show an utter lack of class in booing the American anthem and others in the Liberal caucus spewing anti-American sentiment, I really have to question what we as a country stand for, if anything at all.
: The opposition to the war in Iraq is as high in Britain as it is in Canada, (at about 70% of the people polled). Nevertheless, Prime Minister Tony Blair, with little regard for his political future, has staked everything on having Britain support the United States in the war effort. This can be contrasted with Prime Minister Jean Chrétien's decision to look to his and his party's political future and deciding to stay out. I have little doubt that all else will be forgotten in their legacy and history will judge both men on this one decision.
During the Second World War, my father, serving in the Polish Forces under British command, served for a time in Iraq. I have been a proud Canadian for 45 years, yet on hearing U.S. Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld enumerate the coalition forces on the ground as U.S., British, Australian and Polish, never in these past 45 years have I felt so proudly Polish and less so Canadian.
: Canadians are dyspeptic over the war in Iraq. On the one hand we want to be pacifist, non-belligerent; on the other we see a desperate situation in the Middle East, rife with potential for global disaster, and we choose to sit back and wring our hands.
15 gigabytes of fame
: Leave it to today's instant media onslaught to turn Salam Pax into an overexposed star before we all even get to meet him.
Stories about him are everywhere: CNN, Der Spiegel, the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, and every local paper that does a story on weblogs.
I only hope that all the efforts to get closer to him, identifying his career and even his ISP, does not let Saddam's SS identify him before we get to meet him.
Smug Frenchmen?
: According to Google's translation tool, there is no French equivalent for Schadenfreude, but you can bet there should be, for that is how the French are looking at the, shall we say, realistic pace of the war in Iraq. Says the Times of London: THE travails of the coalition forces in Iraq were greeted with barely disguised satisfaction by many in France yesterday, as commentators concluded that Baghdad was already winning the battle for information in the war....
...a mood of “we told you so” is palpable in the spin and presentation of the “Anglo-Saxon” conflict, and the official allied version of events is treated with the same scepticism as that of Baghdad.
Bad news for the coalition is being tacitly seized upon as a vindication of the French stand against war....
A weekend newspaper poll found President Bush to be the most unpopular leader. He is disliked by 84 per cent of the French, and Tony Blair by 75 per cent. Gerhard Schröder, the German Chancellor, is admired by 71 per cent and President Putin of Russia by 47 per cent. Opinion was not sought on Saddam Hussein. G'bless British understatement.
And defeat is just defeat
: Peggy Noonan writes in the Times of London today about America's tolerance for a rising body count: The world has for some time assumed that America cannot, or will not, accept widespread casualties if the fight proves brutal and bloody. President Saddam Hussein obviously thinks that with enough difficulties and enough deaths America will fold, as it did in Somalia and Lebanon, and retreat. And of course there was Vietnam....
My own hunch is that Americans are more patient, persevering and accepting of pain than we know. We found that out on 9/11, and we may be about to find it out again. But Americans are practical. They all know how to do a cost-benefit analysis. They will be patient, persevering and willing to absorb pain as long as they feel they can win and are winning. They will accept bodybags as part of the price of victory, but not for a second will they accept them if they start to see evidence of defeat.
Victory is the only victory
: Howard Stern has been complaining that we are trying to run the politically correct war.
The Times of London agrees.
Great minds think alike.
Says Michael Gove in the Times: I fear that progress towards crushing Saddam’s tyranny has been hindered by the politically correct manner in which he and President Bush have prosecuted this war so far.
In the Second World War Churchill had no end save victory. In this war the allies have no end of other priorities, from pursuing a green agenda to winning Brownie points from anti-war protesters.
Get 'im, Lassie, get 'im!
: My colleage Peter Hauck says, look for PETA to join anti-war protests. This from a CNN story: The U.S. Navy will bring in trained dolphins this week to hunt for seaborne mines in the waters around Umm Qasr, Navy officials said. The animals will seek out floating mines and mark them for Navy divers to inspect. : More news for PETA: Morrocco is said to be supplying monkeys to disarm landmines.
: Update: PETA has a statement! (Surprise). From the Smoking Gun: "Our troops deserve the best defense possible, but PETA opposes the use of dolphins, sea lions, or any other marine mammals. The project is cruel and cannot provide a reliable defense or surveillance for our troops. The Navy claims they are not putting these animals in harm's way, but they've removed these animals from their homes, relocated them to foreign waters in the Persian Gulf, and are forcing them to not only inspect the waters, but to actually swim up to potential terrorists under the water, clamp a cuff on their leg, and deploy a floating marker. How can anyone say these animals are not being put in harm's way?" :More on the patriotic dolphins here.
:And let's not forget the valuable role of -- sniff, sniff -- canaries.
Blogs and big media
: As Howard Sherman puts it, another one bites the dust: Now Time Inc. has instructed freelancer Joshua Kucera to stop posting to his personal weblog: My editors have demanded that I stop posting to this site until the war ends. And they pay the bills, so what can I do. Thanks everyone for reading, and I hope to be back here soon. Peace, Josh. Just this morning in Matthew Rose's Wall Street Journal piece (below), a Time spokesperson said -- wisely, it seemed: "Time.com only asks that Kucera file to Time first, then he can blog away." Oh, well.
Add that to CNN's Kevin Sites being told to stop blogging by CNN.
We smell a sad trend.
Now I'm very lucky. I'm a big-media guy and a I blog for work and personally. I'm lucky to work for enlightened bosses who understand the power of this medium.
What's needed here is some education and enlightenment for other big-media types.
I have heard their fears.
They fear that a weblogger won't do his or her real work. My answer: You're right. You still have to manage the person. But a weblog can also bring both of you benefits: The weblogger can find new story ideas out there on the web and from the audience and that can enrich the service you give your readers. The more your reporters listen to the audience, the better reporters they will be.
They fear that webloggers will publish things on the web without editing. My answer: You're right. You could edit posts, but that's a pain and it detracts from the immediacy of blogging. So my advice is: If you trust them to report for you, then you probably should trust them to blog. But if they mess up, stomp on them. Also know that they will make typos; I do all the time (but my audience copy-edits me!).
They fear that webloggers will point to things on the web that are not reliable and not journalistic. My answer: You're right. Just the other day, I pointed to a site called Pave France. I've pointed frequently to drivel from Iran. I make fun of Michael Moore and point to him. But that's what the Web is about: You hear the buzz, good and bad, from the people. And the audience is wise enough to judge the difference.
They fear that webloggers will link to competitors. My answer: You're right again! They will. That's what the Web is about, linking. But if you provide a good service with those links, readers will return to you.
I say that the wise thing to do would be to create weblogs for these energetic contributors and see what happens. If they do it under the company banner, I'll bet they'll do it carefully and well (and if they don't, you're still the boss). And you will get new content, new perspectives, new voices, new audiences.
This isn't as easy as it looks. Companies like CNN and Time are properly concerned with protecting their credibility, their reputation, their brands. That makes them cautious. But I predict that competition will open this up. If Newsweek blogs, Time will. If FoxNews blogs, CNN will. Give it time.
P.S. I think we are winning
: That P.S. comes at the end of a letter home on Sgt. Stryker.
The casual warrior
: My wife suggests that President Bush would have been better off not spending the first weekend of the war at Camp David. Not good for the image.
Now Tony Blair is coming to see Bush and they're going to the camp.
On the White House press briefing today, a reporter asked Ari Fleischer why they're not meeting at the White House.
"It's a very good place to sit down in an informal atmosphere," was the answer.
Embedded in the press corps
: New York Magazine media dog Michael Wolff is in every Centcom briefing. Today, Gen. Renuart called on him as "the gentleman with my kind of haircut."
Wolf asked the general whether the media was misrepresenting the progress of the war... or not.
"The media is reality," the general replied. "The media is a snapshot of what it sees at that point in time.... The challenge has been the immediacy.... I don't think the media has had an adverse effect... I think most of the commanders are comfortable."
Farewell to a pioneer
: The man who truly invented mobile computing, Adam Osborne, has died. Jimmy Gutterman told me on his weblog. Here is Osborne's | |