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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.

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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....

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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?

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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]

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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?

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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