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BuzzMachine
by Jeff Jarvis
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April 30, 2003
Tonight's dilemma
: West Wing or Tina Brown? Hmmmm.
Christmas in May: A Janeane Garofalo interview
: Oh boy, oh boy, I go to Alternet and what do I find but a Janeane Garofalo interview with the Progressive that was done just as war started. A few crunchy nuggets: Q: What's your opinion on the current state of the mainstream media?
Garofalo: The mainstream media has, in my opinion, been so grossly negligent, so disturbingly devoid of authentic debate, and actual dissemination of information....
The parents of the troops who die and the parents of Iraqi civilians who die should have the right to slap a lot of these media outlets with a suit of criminal negligence. Military parents would have a legitimate case, especially against Fox and the New York Post for cheerleading this thing the whole way, for waving the flag, and using knee-jerk, sycophantic, pseudo-patriotism as a tool to galvanize public opinion. Say what? Sue on what basis? Opinion? You're the one complaining that people are daring to disagree with your opinion and now you want people to sue others over their opinions? That's every bit as stupid as it sounds. Q: Do you think it's possible to have a liberal media network?
Garofalo: It is possible. What's not possible is to penetrate the wall of opposition. The myth is it can't work. Phil Donahue was working, but MSNBC took it off for their own rightwing agenda. Phil Donahue was working? Compared to what? If Phil Donahue is the best video provocateur (we) liberals can come up with, it's a sad and sorry state. Q: Do you have plans to tour again?
Garofalo: No.... I have no plans to travel at this point, in part because nothing's funny to me.
Q: Why is that?
Garofalo: There's been such an assault on democracy here, and the mainstream media is complicit in it. We are living in neo-McCarthy, post-democratic times. Democracy is being criminalized. Democracy is being ignored....
I never imagined that I would never care about dumb things anymore. I never imagined I'd be a person who could transcend that kind of nonsense. But beyond that, I never imagined I would be penalized for speaking out in favor of social justice. I never thought that anyone who spoke out for peace, and diplomacy, and social justice would be pilloried.
I'm frequently depressed, just have a general malaise. And I don't mean a malaise of indifference, I mean a malaise of sadness and fear. I've always been alarmed by some of the things that the mainstream media does and by what the government does, no matter who's in office, but the broken heart is new. So, once again, it's all about Janeane: Janeane the transcender of nonsense, Janeane the pilloried spokesperson for peace, Janeane who just doesn't care about dumb things, Janeane the queen of ennui.
You can never, never underestimate the ego of a star, even a small one.
Janeane: Democracy is far from dead. Disagreement is what democracy is all about.
If you can't stand the heat, get out of the spotlight!
What's wrong with Ashleigh Banfield?
: The transcript of the speech that got Ashleigh Banfield in trouble with her bosses just went up on -- of course -- Alternet. What's striking about it is how naive it is. She's not reporting, she's babbling.
Ambassador Rumsfeld
: Donald Rumsfeld takes soldiers' questions in Iraq right now. He's asked about Iraq and OPEC and starts to answer but then stops himself: "This is diplomacy and I don't do diplomacy. You may have noticed."
SARS central
: When the BBC is good, it's very, very good. The beeb's SARS update.
If news could spread like SARS
: An expat in China who's moving out of Beijing tries to find news about SARS on TV: Last night I saw yet another dimension to the evils of China's censorship machine. I was watching CNN in my hotel when a guest was introduced to dicusss how China's lies about SARS in Beijing were damaging the nation's political system. This sounded interesting and I sat up to listen. Suddenly, to my utter amazement, the screen went black. It stayed black for about ten minutes with no sound. Then, just as suddenly, the picture and sound came back, just in time for me to hear the announcer thanking the speaker for his time. China is still obsessed with censoring the news and will go to any lengths to keep people in the dark about its crimes, whether we're talking about Tiananmen Square or SARS.
If democracy could spread like SARS
: A secular, pro-democracy activist in Iran issues a statement that hints at asking for outside (read: American) help there: We invite non-governmental reformists, constitutional monarchists, religious-nationalists, socialists and all freedom lovers who understand the necessity of unity, to join us in the only alternative for liberty without bloodshed. Otherwise the oppressed people of Iran might seek other ways to escape cruelty, corruption, injustice and poverty and ask foreigners for freedom -- like in Afghanistan and Iraq.
Co-conspirators
: Robert J. Lieber in The Chronicle of Higher Education does a great job of exposing, summarizing, and puncturing the conspiracy theories of the when-did-they-become-anti-Semitic-left regarding the supposed neocon cabal running the U.S. with ambitions to run the world: A small band of neoconservative (read, Jewish) defense intellectuals, led by the "mastermind," Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz (according to Michael Lind, writing in the New Statesman), has taken advantage of 9/11 to put their ideas over on an ignorant, inexperienced, and "easily manipulated" president (Eric Alterman in The Nation), his "elderly figurehead" Defense Secretary (as Lind put it), and the "dutiful servant of power" who is our secretary of state (Edward Said, London Review of Books).
Thus empowered, this neoconservative conspiracy, "a product of the influential Jewish-American faction of the Trotskyist movement of the '30s and '40s" (Lind), with its own "fanatic" and "totalitarian morality" (William Pfaff, International Herald Tribune) has fomented war with Iraq -- not in the interest of the United States, but in the service of Israel's Likud government (Patrick J. Buchanan and Alterman).
This sinister mythology is worthy of the Iraqi information minister... [via Die Zeit]
April 29, 2003
Yo, Tina
: I Want Media interviews Tina Brown. Gawker is so jealous it could spit nails.
Beep... beep... blip!... beep...
: I have a few things in common with Gary Farber. We have blogs. And we spent time in the emergency room this week with things beeping, blipping, bleeping, and burping at us.
For me, it's the apparently never-ending aftermath of 9.11. I breathed in a few cubic yards of pulverized building. I got pneumonia. I had a breathing test. They gave a spritz of something probably illegal in 49 states (but I could have pulled a week of all-nighters). My heart lost its rhythm (as a pasty white Protestant, my hold on rhythm is tenuous at best). It has lost its rhythm a few times since. I now take drugs. I stoke my rich, deep hypochondria. So I thought I'd lost that rhythm again but, as it turns out, I only lost the insurance company some money as they told me that earthquake in my chest every 20 seconds is just a "palpitation." What a cute word. So I take more drugs. I go home, embarrassed. But I go home.
Gary had it worse. He had pneumonia. He had high blood pressure (high enough to squirt a firehose, it would seem). He left with powerful drugs. But, ever looking on the bright side, he notes that at least he doesn't have SARS.
I note all this from the blog of the good Thomas Nephew, who makes mention of trying out our panting, wheezing, sweating, hallucinating blog friend's Paypal box and that sounds like a good idea, eh?
Homefront
: There was a lot of wailing and nashing at the arrest of an Intel employee, Maher Hawash, as if this was some obvious act of the big fascist state. I said nothing because I have at least enough faith in our system to believe that there had to be some reason to hold the guy and if not, the truth -- or at least the questions -- would emerge. Well, he was just charged with aiding al-Queda and the Taliban. I don't care if he had a respectable software job. If he helped our enemy, he is our enemy. If he helped terrorists, he is a terrorist. And he will receive a fair trial. [via Instapundit]
The sun never sets
: Nick Denton, back off the beach, writes today about the dangers of America as the guarantor of the world's safety or democracy or economy: A guarantor, whether an insurance company or a central bank, typically encourages perverse behavior. Countries borrow too much, and their banks lend too freely, both in the expectation of a bailout by the International Monetary Fund.
The US, by assuming the role of global guarantor, runs an analogous risk. By guaranteeing the security of Israel, it ensures that no Israeli government will make a territorial settlement with the Palestinians. By guaranteeing the global order, unilaterally, the US encourages the caprice of a country such as France. By supporting the Mubarak regime in Egypt, the US removes the pressure for democratization. With an external power guaranteeing stability, the people of Egypt and other puppet states can never take ownership of their own predicament. As bankers sometimes say, the road to hell is paved with guarantees....
So, a therapeutic suggestion. Now is the perfect time for the United States to withdraw from the Korean peninsula. The prospect of an American imperium is on people's minds. Having demonstrated its power in Iraq, the US can abdicate without revealing weakness....
Let someone else worry for a change. It will do them good. Spoken like a true British imperialist.
It was the colonial infection of Britain, France, Germany, Holland, and even Soviet Russia that got us in this mess, let's remember: Not so much guaranteeing the security of their colonies (though that was the conceit) but babying them so they never did develop their democratic muscle and so they resented nations with power.
Britain planned to be the guarantor -- having been the creator -- of Iraq for a few generations and then just said, to hell with it, let somebody else worry about it.
I hope that's not what we're about. I hope we do mean what we say: That we will nurture democracy and security and economies in Iraq and in Palestine and in a few other choice places and then leave friends -- as we did, truly, in Germany and Japan. I hope we set and meet that high standard again. But at least we have experience at it.
The imperial example is not ours. It is, again, Britain's and France's and so on and so on.
Lock up Grandma!
: Geraldo Rivera threatens to get a "real weblog." [via I Want Media]
Sars and Chinese blogs
: Preston Whip, a Hong Kong blogger, took a tour of Chinese blogs to see what they were saying about SARS and among them he found this class analysis of disease: The ruling class accumulates capital by brutally squeezing peasants. The rich live in obscene luxury while peasants are impoverished. SARS has erupted as a result of the unhygienic conditions the impoverished class face. The ruling class live separately from these conditions, but they have a moral duty and must help shoulder the responsibility to establish a fair foundation for all people in society. The price of the rich living extravagently is the disorder of the lower classes and a disease like SARS. Today, he also links to a story about rioting in one Chinese town over SARS.
Could disease bring revolution?
: And Preston responds to my post about smelling a rat in China's decision to close Internet cafes. He thinks my suspicion of cynical behavior from Chinese leadership -- taking this convenient opportunity to try to shut down Internet usage -- may be right but he also gives us an interesting view of the spread of the Internet in China: Beijing, like most other large Chinese cities, has seen cyber cafes pop up like bean sprouts. The ensuing competition has meant that access to the internet is affordable (I’ve seen hourly rates as low as 2 yuan - or cheaper than a bottle of beer), which means that just about anyone with a job, the skill and inclination can log on....
Many of my friends and acquaintance in China are wired at home. A lot of people logging onto bbs or chat rooms (both very popular with university students), or blogging, are therefore doing it from their own room. Sure, people hook up from cyber cafes too. But enough are tapping away at home to make any complete shutdown impossible. And then there’s mobile phones and text messaging. If disease doesn't bring revolution, the Internet will....
: Meanwhile, BWG of Hong Kong gives us the Chairman Maosk.
: Update: See Donald Sensing expanding the point above.
The Persian bridge
: Hoder (does he need an introduction? he's the Persian blogging pioneer who has been reporting on the arrest of Iranian blogger Sina Motallebi) writes about this very blog today. It's on his Persian blog -- so I have no idea what he said -- but you can see the headline in English here: "Jeff Jarvis is trying to bridge between Iranian and American blogosphere in his BuzzMachine" or "ديالوگ بين بلاگستان ايرانی و آمريکايی "
To Hoder's many readers: Welcome!
: Thanks to Sobh in the comments, here's a translation: He says: Jeff Jarvis is one of famous webloggers/journalists of English blogland. He's got concerned to Persian weblogs after Sina's arrest (some may say he is a spy of CIA!) and in his weblog named Buzz Machine, is making a dialog, as he says, between Persian and English blogland by pursuing English Iranian blogs. For example yesterday he made a permanent section in his weblog for links to Iranian weblogs and listed some most active ones in it. Except that, he is continually quoting from some interesting Iranian weblogs. (I wish there were more Iranian weblogs, getting updated from inside Iran.) Jarvis has launched Entertainment Weekley and some other magazines before and now is running Advance.net. Spy? I'm sure he's just joking but it would improve my image and explain lots of mysterious behavior.
: Just so we're clear, I know that Hoder was joking and I loved the joke. I don't want anything to be gained or lost in the translation here...
April 28, 2003
Me Tarzan, You Norm
: Norman Mailer says the real reason we went to war was to boost the ego of white American males: The key question remains — why did we go to war? It is not yet answered. In the end, it is likely that a host of responses will produce a cognitive stew, which does, at least, open the way to offering one’s own notion. We went to war, I could say, because we very much needed a war. The US economy was sinking, the market was gloomy and down, and some classic bastions of the erstwhile American faith (corporate integrity, the FBI, and the Catholic Church, to cite but three) had each suffered a separate and grievous loss of face. Since our Administration was probably not ready to solve any one of the serious problems before it, it was natural to feel the impulse to move into larger ventures, thrusts into the empyrean-war!...
As a matter of collective ego, the good white American male had had very little to nourish his morale since the job market had gone bad, unless he happened to be in the Armed Forces. And when did you stop beating your wife, you cigar-chomping he-man, you?
The prince and the pundit
: Prince Charles on nanotechnology: The prince has raised the spectre of the "grey goo" catastrophe in which sub-microscopic machines designed to share intelligence and replicate themselves take over and devour the planet. I eagerly await Glenn Reynolds' response.
Persian v. Arab weblogs
: Nima Arian (a commenter, below) points me to a post by Salam Pax expressing his jealousy over Iranian/Persian weblogs: I am really jealous.
The First Persian Top Weblogs Competition
this blog won the second prize for blog design it has a a picture of an oriental tea glass. istikan chai dear?
when are we arabs going to have something like that? and why have persians taken to blogging so easily than arabs? why isn't there a single arabic weblog? why?why?why? Salam's own will, I hope, be the first of many.
And Kurds and Turks and Jordanians and Palestinians and Saudis and on and on...
The World Trade Center Memorial
: The competition for design of the World Trade Center Memorial has opened. Find the rules here.
Designers must summarize their entire concept for the 4.7-acre site on one 30-by-40-inch presentation board, meaning that only high-concept (read: starkly simple) ideas can possibly win.
I am working on mine.
Rebirth: Iraq v. Japan
: Astigma, a Persian blog, sees parallels between Japan post WWII and Iraq post Gulf II. Japan developed technological prowess fast not by reinventing wheels but by reverse engineering existing technology. So, says Astigma, should Iraq reverse engineer democracy elsewhere in the world to succeed quickly. That is exactly the kind of help we need to give Iraq. To use another modern bizbuzzword, we need to implement best practices.
The arrest of Sina Motallebi, Day 8
: Hoder has an update on the arrest of the Iranian blogger -- a post that demonstrates the great complexity of life and politics in Iran. Sina said to Iranian Students News Aganecy (ISNA) he was hopeful that the court was going to accept his explanations and even woudn't take him to the court. He was worried that some people's support, might make new problems and new questions for him in the interogation process. He sounded confident and calm, but as I said, worried. He talked to ISNA while he appeared in a court in Mehrabad Airport (!) for the first time after a week of being in costudy.
This is what makes it complicated in Iran, nobody really knows if his/her support would help the detainee or hurt him/her more.
More on the Baghdad Blog Daily
: Glenn Reynolds points us to a piece of Slate's David Plotz on the seven habits of highly effective democracy building in Iraq and one of them hammers the point I've been making lately about using the web -- specifically weblogs -- to foster free speech and a free press in Iraq: 5. Use new technology and media to instill the habits of democracy. Democracy is a learned behavior. The experiences of the former Soviet Union and Cambodia are evidence that democracy stumbles if citizens don’t know how to act like citizens. In a totalitarian state, people are trained to shut up and avoid trouble. They don’t understand the new behavior that democracy demands. They even fear it. This is a disaster since democracy can’t flourish with a timid citizenry.
Iraqis can’t learn these habits overnight, but new technology and media can help speed up the process. As National Endowment for Democracy President Carl Gershman and others point out, the Internet is a superb tool for bringing people together and prompting them to organize. E-mail and the Web help far-flung people ally over shared religious or political or economic interests — sometimes for ill, as with al-Qaida, but often for good. In Kosovo, for example, an NGO has posted an online training course for political activists, a free guide for anyone who is trying to figure out how to start a political party.
The Internet — an endless bazaar of clashing ideas — also demonstrates the virtues of free speech to people who don’t know them, says Sheryl Brown, who co-directs the Virtual Diplomacy Initiative at U.S. Institute of Peace. (A number of readers, in fact, have suggested scattering Internet kiosks across Iraq to seed free speech.)
Who rules
: This from the Reuters pool report on the meeting on the future of Iraq going on now: There are clear differences among Iraqis on what role the United States should play, delegates say.
Some (mostly non-exiiles) want the Americans to have a direct role in the interim period to prepare for elections, because they don't trust each other.
Others (mainly exiles) say only Iraqis should rule Iraq and the US should have less influence in the interim period.
Mustapha Qazwin, who lives in the United States, a sheikh and a doctor, said: "We are having healthy discussions between people inside Iraq and who were outside Iraq. This is a democratic process and we are still debating the best route forward."
Suheil al-Suheil, a Baghdad lawyer, said: "There are differences over the role of the Americans. We here prefer the Americans to rule us in the interim period."
Asked why, he said: "We are not ready to handle this yet. Saddam's orphans are still alive." The nonexiles are the ones who are living the reality of Iraq.
Roses are dead, violence is you...
: Michelle is holding a Saddam Birthday Poetry Contest.
Iranian humor
: Hoder, the trailblazing Iranian/Canadian blogger I've quoted often lately, maintains both an English-language blog and a Persian blog but even there, he's nice enough to show us his English headlines, including this: Joke: Saddam wrote a will before the Americans attacked. His wish was, "When I die, give my hand to Khamenei, my moustache to Rafsanjani and my balls to Khatami."
Iraqi democracy
: Alt.Muslim wonders about the form of democracy that can grow in Iraq. When al-Qaida links couldn't be found and the search for weapons of mass destruction didn't move our allies into action, bringing democracy to the suffering people to Iraq became the new raison d'etre for "Operation Iraqi Freedom." But what does democracy mean to a people who have never practiced it? How do you bring a society from tribal identifications with ethnic or religious groups into an arena where respect for the will of the majority forms the foundation of the state? The writer debates the role of Islam -- the Turkish model or (unspoken) the Iranian model? I didn't make clear in my post on Iraqi democracy below that religion can be involved in a democracy, of course but it can't replace democracy. England, Italy, Israel, Ireland and many other countries have official state religions. Yes, my American DNA brings with it a strong belief in separation of church and state to insure the freedom of both. But it need not be an absolute. Still, I do see a clear line: Do the people get to choose their leaders and their laws or does a religious leadership choose both for them? One is democracy, the other is religious dictatorship.
What he says
: Thomas Friedman: As far as I'm concerned, we do not need to find any weapons of mass destruction to justify this war. That skull, and the thousands more that will be unearthed, are enough for me. Mr. Bush doesn't owe the world any explanation for missing chemical weapons (even if it turns out that the White House hyped this issue). It is clear that in ending Saddam's tyranny, a huge human engine for mass destruction has been broken....
Whether you were for or against this war, whether you preferred that the war be done with the U.N.'s approval or without it, you have to feel good that right has triumphed over wrong. America did the right thing here. It toppled one of the most evil regimes on the face of the earth, and I don't think we know even a fraction of how deep that evil went. Fair-minded people have to acknowledge that. Who cares if we now find some buried barrels of poison? Do they carry more moral weight than those buried skulls? No way.
So why isn't everyone celebrating this triumph?
April 27, 2003
B-Roll: Arab
: I've added new weblogs, mostly by Iranians, under B-Roll: Arab (on the right). I'm not sure what the proper description is: Arab, Persian... In any case, there are lots of interesting English-language blogs from that part of the world. Expect more.
: Bless the world of weblogs. Moments after putting up this post, I got advice to change to B-Roll: Persian. Done.
: Now I'm already in a MidEast PC problem. Some say Persian is too limiting. I would like to be able to include weblogs from anywhere in that neighborhood. Should it be B-Roll: Mideast?
What does Democracy mean (for Iraq)?
: The people of Iraq must have a democracy. They deserve nothing less.
: Coming home the other night, I turned on the radio and heard someone with an accent say dismissively that you just can't force democracy on a country -- namely, Iraq. I came in too late to hear who said it. And, unfortunately, the NPR reporter didn't bother to question the statement. For it was hogwash.
Democracy was "forced" on Germany and Japan and it has worked splendidly, just as well as (if not better than) it has worked in countries that came by democracy through popular uprising and revolt. Their Germans and the Japanese -- once assumed to be incapable of managing democracy themselves -- have long-since and resoundingly proven all their condescending naysayers wrong. They have proven that when people are given a chance to govern themselves, they will do it eagerly and well -- in fits and starts, perhaps, but in the end, well.
: Now there is a school of thought that asks, what if the Iraqis choose a theocracy or even a dictatorship instead of democracy? That's certainly what we're hearing from Shiite clerics in Iraq. I'm hearing rumblings of this from the anti-war club.
A superb weblog by an Iranian called the Eyeranian poses the question well: To me a dictatorship, mixed with visions of divine responsibilities is probably the most horrendous type of repression possible. Close to a quarter of a century of an autocratic government in Iran, bringing mass executions, murders, large-scale imprisonments, terror, oppression and corruption is the prime confirmation of this line of reasoning....
Having said that, one of the bases for any true democracy is to accept the people’s prerogative to occasionally make wrong choices and even more often, to make choices that you and I may not like or agree with. But at the end of the day, the choice is completely theirs. By that I mean that if in a free and open election Iranians choose to keep the current regime, it would be vital for people like myself to value and honor their choice, yet reserving our right to oppose it in peaceful fashion and by non-violent means.
This of course also applies to the people of Iraq. We invaded their country supposedly to “establish democracy” and give them the option of selecting their own form of government, elect their true representatives and enact laws according to their own sets of values and cultural make-up. However, a short few weeks after the fall of Saddam Hussein regime of terror, the hawks running globe’s only super-power are trying to take away that very right. By this line of reasoning, if the people choose a theocracy -- a dictatorship, even -- isn't that democratic because it was, at least, a choice?
: I respectfully disagree. The problem here is the definition of democracy.
Democracy is not a one-time event: Go into the polls and pick your government or your leader and then lump it for the foreseeable future.
No, democracy is a process.
First and foremost, democracy is a living, ever-changing social organism. Its ability to change is exactly what gives the people power over their leaders. Essential to any definition of a democracy is that it allows the people to change leaders -- and thus the course of government -- at any time, in a peaceful process, without having to resort to revolution.
Second, a democracy is never just its leader. If you go to the polls and pick a leader and then that person cuts off democratic process, he becomes a dictator, whether religious or secular, whether an ayatollah or a Saddam.
Third, a democracy is its constitution. That is, the process of democracy -- the means by which the various interests and needs of the people are both enforced and protected -- is enshrined in a constitution (rather than in a person or a party). We must work with the people of Iraq -- as we worked with Germany and Japan and are now working with the people of Afghanistan -- to create a system of governance that gives the power permanently to the people and protects that power through representative institutions, through checks and balances, and through the ability to change that constitution when the people will it.
Fourth, a democracy must protect the rights of all the people, including minorities. Especially in a fractious nation such as Iraq, just taking power away from one group and giving it to another -- just letting the Shiite religious leaders rule because they wield the majority -- is trading one brand of dictatorship for another. That majority vote would not be democracy; it would be oppression. No, the constitution and the process of elections must allow for a give and take of all groups and all interests.
Fifth, a democracy depends on a well-informed electorate and thus it must support free speech, a free press, and independent education.
: A democracy respects its people.
Those who say that Iraqis cannot handle democracy give them no respect.
A revolution starts with one blog
: Hossein Derakhshan, aka Hoder, runs the Iranian weblog Editor:Myself where he not only has been reporting on the arrest of Iranian weblogger Sina Motallebi (and today he recalls witnessing the repression of free speech in Iran first-hand), but I now learn that he also practically single-handedly started the Iranian blogging revolution.
A fellow blogger named Khodadad wrote an article about Hoder and the start of Iranian weblogs: It all started when an article appeared in a popular Iranian news site, written by a twenty something former Iranian journalist, a refugee of the shut-down reformist newspapers in Iran, who lived in Canada. He had discovered the format of blogging, and manipulated the latest common operating system to write blogs in Persian. In a few simple paragraphs, he explained what web-logs are, and how he had managed to created a template that allowed one to use the Unicode system to write Persian. He was perhaps hoping that a few Iranians would pick up the lead and make a presence in the world of web-logging. Well, he was right about “some” picking up the lead, but not about how many. In less than two months, more than 200 Iranian blogs were created on the internet! That was November of 2001. Now, a year and four months later, than number is closer to 1,500! The piece tells about how women started a network about their rights in Iran via weblogs and about the many other uses the youth of Iran have made of this powerful publishing tool.
: I'll repeat one more time -- and keep repeating it until I get a call from the White House or the State Department or a major underwriter agreeing that this is a good idea they should get behind: Imagine if we helped start a simple network of weblogs in Iraq. Imagine how they could foster free speech, free press, and democracy. Imagine how they could empower the youth of Iraq to build their future. Imagine how they could foster communication and understanding in the rest of the world.
Or instead of imagining, maybe we should just do it, eh?
Dependence and democracy
: Hooman, an Iranian blogger, raises an interesting question regarding economics and democracy: Imagine you live in a country with a diverse economy. Imagine you keep 70% of your income in your pocket and end up paying 30% to the government as tax. Your government hinges on you and your fellow countrymen and women to stay afloat then.... Now imagine you live in a country with an economy living off … let’s say the oil. And that is the job of the government to sell it and distribute the profit among its subjects … oops, I mean its population. So the 70% you keep in your pocket is from the guys in the top. It is obvious that an oil-rich government with a nature as such is not so keen then to collect the 30% tax from you. Reclaiming the money that's already given out? It won't be so shocking then to learn the tax laws are not really enforced....
Anyway, the point that I am starting to miss to drive home is: Once a government, whom you feed, occasionally pushes you around, what do you expect to see from a government who feeds you?
Does it explain why some oil producing countries move toward democracy when the oil prices are low and move the opposie direction when their pockets are full of the green back note, i.e. US $? All the more reason that we must help Iraq build an economy built on the value of its people, not just its oil
Just what are they trying to stop?
: I smell a cynical act China's decision to shut entertainment venues to stop the spread of SARS. Included in that is the closure of Internet cafes. Why Internet cafes and why not trains, restaurants, stores, and other public venues? Perhaps they also want to stop the spread of information?
April 26, 2003
Pandemic
: A British scientist warns that a billion people worldwide could be infected with SARS by year's end -- more than are infected with AIDS (though SARS is not as fatal).
Smoking guns
: The Telegraph says it has found a bin Laden-Saddam link.
Anonymous blogging in cases of danger
: I'm not generally in favor of anonymous blogging. What makes blogs so good is that people are willing to put their names and reputations behinds them. But there are plenty of circumstances in which anonymity are required for safety -- take, for example Iran, where Sina Motallebi was arrested.
Pierce Wetter suggests some standards that would allow bloggers and their readers to keep their identities hidden from the mullahs.
And, voila!, here I see [via Rollberg] Invisiblog, which lets you publish a blog that's untraceable.
See also Mixmaster for anonymous email (misused by spammers but handy here). [via Intern.de]
Have at it, Iranians! And Cubans. And Saudis. And Chinese....
Free speech ain't free
: Harry complains that the decisions by the Times of London and now the Independent to charge for their content -- business arguments aside -- will only shrink the audience and debate (and thus influence) of their writers and what they have to say. Right. Fisk has become well-known over here because of the Web.
Humorless
: Last night, as I reported, George Bush joked with Tom Brokaw that he wouldn't be inviting Jacques Chirac to his ranch anytime soon. Now the Independent is getting all huffy about this and so is Buzzflash: A New Low for America. Bush Takes This Country's Diplomacy Into the Gutter. He Will "Punish" France. Bush Publicly Boasts That He Won't Invite Chirac to His Ranch. It Is Way Past Time for Impeachment. But First, Give Bush His Rattle Back. .IT WAS A JOKE, YOU TONE DEAF IDIOT! Granted, the guy's no David Letterman, but even I could hear the twang of irony.
When did the left lose its sense of humor, ferchrissakes?
And besides, who'd want to go to Bush's dust heap in the middle of nowhere? Certainly not a Frenchman. There isn't an oyster within 900 miles.
If ever a place needed a bar and its residents a drink...
: Afghanistan's only bar has been shut by a terorrist threat.
Political primary, Iraqi style
: The (still impressive) Christian Science Monitor blog reports that the CIA's candidate to lead Iraq was assassinated by Shiites.
Naked truth
: Matt Welch is one of the few to have seen something truly frightening before I took it down.
Problogging
: Go read Ken Layne on the case of the newspaper blogger who was shut down.
April 25, 2003
How low can spam go?
: I just go my first spam "from" Iraq in the Nigerian spam tradition: "This transaction is now only known by you, myself and my old sick mother."
... and a million other victims of your sick, criminal trespass.
No soup for you, Jacques
: My favorite line from Bush's interview with Brokaw: Asked about Chirac, Bush says: "I doubt he'll be coming to the ranch anytime soon."
I'm going to get in trouble for this
: I'm sorry. I can't help myself. After hearing the news that youths are being held with other Afghan terrorists and combatants in Cuba, I can't get Alan King's Hello, Muddah, Hello, Faddah tune out of my head but with new lyrics: Hello, Mullah
Hello, Fatwa,
Here I am at
Camp Guantanamo!
They've got Korans,
With lots of pages,
They've got really big Marines
who guard us in our cages. But seriously, folks: OK, I'm sorry. That was wrong. Hold your comments...
When I first heard that juveniles were being held at Guantanamo, I was disturbed.
But yesterday, I listened to the Pentagon briefing reminding us that these youth were alleged to have killed people. And I looked back at some news stories about youth -- youth! -- being sent in as human bombs by Palestinian nuts. And I reminded myself that these people do not respect their own youth; they send them into battle. I also watched the news, on which a Pennsylvania youth shot up his school; we've put these youth in jail.
So holding youth may not be unjustified.
But at the same time, we should not be stupid as we try to win not just wars but also hearts and minds. Is it worth holding a terrorist teen when it's going to make us look bad?
Amen to that
: Rumsfeld says the government of Iraq will not be an Iranian-style government run by clerics. Finally, somebody said it.
Liberal New York no longer
: New York was supposed to be the capital of the left but now the NY Observer declares our Apple the capital of neoconservatives. The story gives us a map to NY Neos -- ground zero being, of course, Rupert Murdoch's HQ on Sixth Avenue. It gives us Neo history. And it give us Neo humor: "I have been amazed by the level of conspiracy-mongering around neocons," said David Brooks, an editor at Mr. Murdoch and Mr. Kristol’s Weekly Standard, and author of Bobos in Paradise. "I get it every day—the ‘evil Jewish conspiracy.’ The only distinction between ‘neoconservative’ and ‘conservative’ this way is circumcision. We actually started calling it the Axis of Circumcision."
Sina Motallebi update: Day 4
: Hoder gives us an update on the arrest of an Iranian blogger. Other Iranian bloggers are, understandably, scared.
: I pick out an Iranian weblog at random from Hoder's blogroll and here's what I read: Apparently the fall of the dictator has had a big impact on Iranian Islamic regime. Those who are in control who possess non-elected power have already felt something.
Recently, a lot of web sites have been banned by a direct instruction from Iranian ministry of telecom. This list includes hadisara, home page of satirist Hadi Khorsandi. Also an entertainment web site called roozi.
But most amazing of them all, is nedstat, which is a hit counter I am using....
I've been trying to stay out of trouble; Stay away from politics. But this one [that is, the arrest of Sina Motallebi -ed.] has nothing to do with politics. It's just jeopardizing my freedom of expression. Arresting this guy just because he expresses his ideas in his weblog is not reasonable in a modern world.
This stupid act will lead to anonymous weblogs (like mine) which are much harder to control. : And this: No pain no gain? So tell me how many thousand years we're to suffer before we can finally gain our Democracy? ...
What factors gave rise to the cold war between the Mullahs and Iranian Journalists?
There are at least twenty million people who have similar views as these journalists!
How many more Iranians will end up in the oppressive Iranian regime's prisons? : And read this, too -- the target is the Internet: Arrest of Sina Motallebi isn’t the first time someone has been arrested for expressing his opinion in Iran, and it certainly won’t be the last.
This is however part of a new offensive with new targets. It is not the political activists or human rights advocates that are being targeted this time. It’s not even the so called “reformers” or those mildly critical of regime’s tactics or approach. This time it is the youth and the ones who have found new ways of expressing their dissatisfaction with the ruling class that are the new enemy. In particular, freedom of expression via the internet is now being targeted....
Speaking of his web log content, his last few posts before being summoned were (in order) about Iranian newscaster’s inability to pronounce names properly, retirement of the “out of this world champion” Michael Jordan, his son’s teething problems and a reprint of an already published statement by Kambiz Kaheh, a film critic arrested on bogus charges of distributing illegal videos. Hardly risky material.
What Sina represents to them however, is far bigger. He is the symbol of all the young, intellectual, internet and technology savvy new generation this regime has failed to suppress. The latest battleground is the cyberspace and thousands of Persian web logs, from the progressive and politically charged ones to teenager’s sexual experimentations or mundane adolescent babblings is the chosen arena it will be fought in.
Media ironies
: Ted Turner complains that too few companies own too much of U.S. media.
But, Ted, you sold your media company to a media company; you singlehandedly reduced the number of media owners in the U.S. Seller's regret, I guess.
: Ted also called Rupert Murdoch a "warmonger" because of FoxNews' support of the war and the Guardian explains: "Mr Murdoch openly backed the war on Iraq but the unquestioning support of his Fox News channel has caused controversy and astounded UK broadcasters, which are bound by law to maintain impartial and balanced news services."
Bound by law? Now that's a hard law to enforce.
And if it were enforced, would the BBC stay out of the pokey for its opposite view of the war?
: Well, in its own fog of war, the BBC thinks it's enforcing that law of balance. BBC General Director Greg Dyke said in a speech reported by the BBC, of course: "If Iraq proved anything, it was that the BBC cannot afford to mix patriotism and journalism. This is happening in the United States and if it continues will undermine the credibility of the US electronic news media." Ask Andrew Sullivan whether he agrees.
: The problem here is, again, that FoxNews proved to be a gigantic success in the war and nobody in media quite knows what to do with that.
I've said before that -- thanks to the success of FoxNews, the breadth of viewpoints that cable choice allows, and the open expression that weblogs allow, and the audience's embrace of all that -- we are headed to a new media world in which credibility still counts (of course) but in which opinion and perspective aren't necessarily the antithesis to credibility that American journalism -- and, if we are to believe them, British TV journalism, cough, cough -- have long held. We are headed to a world in which news is more compelling and less purposely dull. We are headed to a world in which news matters more.
And, by the way, key to this view is trust in the intelligence of the audience, the people: They can decide what's fact and what's opinion and what their own opinions should be.
: Tim Blair says all this more eloquently than I could. Plus, it sounds tougher with his accent.
Ambivaloid
: Kurt Andersen, in an interview with Minneapolis' The Rake [via Romensko] reveals that he and Graydon Carter are thinking of coming out with a Spy retrospective -- good idea; I know someone who'll love that (and so would I).
He also talks about his decision to support the war, "ruefully and fretfully," which he wrote about in the NY Times magazine. But to be anti-anti-war isn't the same as being pro-war, and that's the sort of the weird ambivalent gray zone where I was for a long time, and still remain, I guess....
On this particular thing with Iraq, I can't understand how anybody can have absolute conviction on either end, frankly. So I'm both a contrarian, I guess, and a kind of chronic ambivaloid. That, as near as I can tell, is a coinage -- no Google references at all for ambivaloid -- and it's a good coinage. In these days of strong opinions, on cable TV or on weblogs, to be amvibalent is to be contrarian.
Canada: It's catching
: The SARS panic is about to get out of hand. Conventions in Toronto are canceled (well, OK, if you fear that nobody's going to come and you're going to lose a fortune). Kids' sports games are canceled. Catholic pilgrims are disinvited from a U.S. even. But here's my favorite: the Washington Post cancels a meeting with Toronto Star execs. Paul Gallo, manager of the Star's editorial computer systems, said he received a call "really late" from Post executive John Benner, cancelling the meeting.
"He left a message, sounding really embarrassed and apologizing, to say the tour of the facility couldn't take place," Gallo said from Washington yesterday.
Gallo ... said Benner told him that he'd been instructed "by his executive editor that the tour wouldn't be a good idea for liability reasons. He explained that, if anybody at the Post were to get ill after our visit, there'd be liability implications." And the National Post sends a reporter to the WHO in Geneva: The hotel desk clerk quickly stepped two paces back yesterday when I told her I was from Toronto. "SARS," she blurted, and for a split second she covered her face with her hands. I wasn't sure if the gesture meant she was embarrassed, or if she was trying to protect herself.
Perhaps she thought that I might infect her. Kill her.
So I asked. "Are you afraid of me?"
"Yes," she replied.
April 24, 2003
Bearing all
: Well, a little discreet nudity certainly got the Dixie Chicks lots of coverage.
The flash of flesh didn't hurt my old magazine, Entertainment Weekly, either.
A hint of nudity certainly goosed Gawker's traffic.
And my own audience is asking me when I'm going to follow (birthday) suit (see the comments here).
So who am I to deny my public? Who am I to pass up a cheap joke? Who am I not to use any stupid trick for traffic?
Herewith the cover of my next magazine...
: Update: I concede defeat. This is far funnier. [via the comments]
Nabbed
Fox and CNN says Tariq Aziz is in custody.
Political correctness knows many authors
: Now this is beatiful: Sen. Sanctimonious has pissed off not only gays and reasonable Americans, he has also pissed off polygamists for lumping them in with adulterers and gays.
The age of populist publishing
: I've been saying to anyone who will listen that the tremendous potential of this blogging thing is that it brings the power of publishing -- yes, quality publishing -- into the hands of the people. More such tools will follow (photo, audio, video, collaboration, marketing tools, search tools... and they'll all get slicker and easier, note the great new stuff coming from Movable Type). And more power will follow (witness the noise blogging is making in Iran; witness the worldwide spread of it).
Here's Google CEO Eric Schmidt explaining (at last) the acquisition of Pyra in this context: I believe that this notion of self-publishing, which is what Blogger and blogging are really about, is the next big wave of human communication. The last big wave was Web activity. Before that one it was e-mail. Instant messaging was an extension of e-mail, real-time e-mail.
The next step in general for information is the self-publishing part. If somebody takes the time to write something, having Google understand that is very important to that person. So if you view the world as one person at a time, getting that person, that author to understand that we value, we index, we search, and we care about their information is a very important part of our strategy....
We’re all still reeling from the fact that there are not homogeneous news sources anymore, that the magazine and publishing industries are becoming more variegated, more distributed, and smaller and more targeted.
The Internet, in particular what’s happening at Google now, is the extreme of this. This is not necessarily all good, but it’s clear that if you extrapolate this out, that there will be a million weblogs of communities that are very distinct and very strong. And they don’t favor one political party or one particular view of life. Many other media companies -- newspaper, magazine, TV, radio, online -- will need to start looking at the world in this way: from the other side, from the perspective of the audience, the audience as publisher.
War, who is it good for?
: Michele has a deliciously cynical view of the anti-war show biz crowd: Protest as a career move. I mean, who would really know that Tim Robbins still existed (except as Mr. Sarandon) if not for his public tirades against George Bush? Would Bill Maher have a tv show or Michael Moore an Oscar or Arianna Huffington a website if not for loud, public dissent?
It's a marketing tool. The people who decry capitalism and all things America are the ones scooping up the cash by the fistful because they cry the loudest.
Don't cry for the Dixie Chicks. They have risen to the top of the pop culture ladder because they said some nasty things about the president.
Ain't that America? As the war fades from the headlines, will these celebs find themselves suffering attention withdraws? Will their careers also fade?
Ow, Canada
: Canada is up in arms over the WHO issuing a travel warning to Toronto because of SARS.
Reality check: I was supposed to be in Toronto this week with my family for vacation. But we cancelled for two reasons: war (which was on when we were reserving) and SARS (which wasn't this bad when we were planning). The truth is that we're very glad that we're not headed there now because of SARS.
Critic, criticize thyself
: Do we sense the irony in Tina Brown making fun of retired generals and retired cops appearing on cable criticizing employed generals and employed cops? An old-style prewar pack frenzy hit when the Laci Peterson murder case returned to the American airwaves. Retired homicide detectives instantly supplanted retired generals as the electronic experts du jour. Does Tina sense the irony, being that she is a retired editor making fun of employed editors on cable (when her show finally launches in April)?
She tries so hard in her latest column to find greater meaning in the fickle interests of TV and its audiences: war and Pfc. Lynch today, Laci tomorrow, Elizabeth and Chandra yesterday. Why is cable news so addicted to missing girls and women? Is it because so much of the audience consists of boiling white males who feel stomped on by the economy and their wives, and girls in peril make them feel protective and virile? The rescue fantasy has never been more potent. This from the former editor of Vanity Fair!
Methinks she's trying too hard to find something to say in the media about the media. Methinks she's thinking too hard. Methinks even she knows it. I wonder when Americans will get tired of being told what to do and think. By publicists. By bloggers. By the Pentagon. By talk show hosts. We are punch-drunk with other people’s prescriptions and opinions. Our think-tanks are overflowing. There are media mullahs everywhere you turn. Yes, and you're one of them.
Naked celebs!
: The mere promise (albeit dashed) of pictures of a half-naked celebrity has sent traffic on Gawker soaring.
Sina Motallebi update
: MSNBC's Will Femia has a roundup on Iranian blogger Motallebi's arrest.
Will links to a post on Blogalization complaining that bloggers have not spread this meme as aggressively as we should.
And there are links to the arrest of a Tunisian blogger in jail because of what he said online. The full story here.
There's a warning in all this: When journalists who work for big-time publications get arrested because of what they dare to say, they still have the power or at least threat of an organization and its printing presses behind them. When a lone blogger gets arrested because of what he dares to say, he has no one but his family ... and us.
: New: Mark Glaser reports on the arrest and bloggers' support for Motallebi at OJR.
Sin
: Don't believe that every Iraqi Muslim is like the crawling, self-flagellating, scalp-slicing pilgrims we've seen on TV this week (just as you shouldn't believe that every American Christian is Jerry Falwell).
Ibidem points us to a report by Rosie Dimanno in the Toronto Star on booze and cigarettes flowing onto the streets of Baghdad: Two weeks ago, American troops eagerly traded their MREs — Meals Ready to Eat (or, in grunt parlance, Meals Rejected by Ethiopians) — for individual cigarettes, none so coveted as a good old Marlboro, but even the revolting Iraqi brands would do. Nowadays, there's a fag stall of all flavours every 10 metres and almost as many sidewalk vendors of alcohol: Johnnie Walker, Dimple, Bells, Absolut, all $25 (U.S.) a bottle. Suddenly, tubs of ice-cold Heineken and Amstel have appeared, replacing the Turkish-brewed Efes Pilsener that was the suds-of-choice (actually, no choice) in Saddam's hermetically sealed Iraq.
Where did all this contraband come from, almost overnight? But then Iraqis, after 12 years of United Nations-imposed sanctions, have become expert at smuggling and bootlegging. Oil, spirits, what's the dif?
Yet for a Muslim country, ostensibly disapproving of alcohol and tobacco, Iraqis sure do enjoy indulging their vices. Because U.S. troops and foreign reporters are not the only consumers of this stuff. And rare is the Iraqi male, Sunni or Shiite, without a butt between his fingers, even with prayer beads intertwined.
It delights me immeasurably to see so many Muslims enjoying the secular life. It's humanizing, and rather ecumenical in its way, for the practitioners of this self-consciously pious religion to burn the candle at least at one end. This is most reassuring, especially as the Shiite clerics — so tightly circumscribed by the secular-cum-Sunni Saddam — appear poised to flex their turban-sanctioned muscle in pursuit of a grim Islamic society. Amen.
April 23, 2003
Where is the charity?
: I'm surprised and saddened that we have not seen an outpouring of charity from the people of the U.S. to the people of Iraq -- and I'm especially shocked that I have not seen this from the churches that opposed the war.
Why? It could be that we think they're the enemy (though we helped enemies that attacked us, Germany and Japan). It could be that we think they're strange (images on the evening news of millions of Muslims slicing their scalps with swords and beating themselves silly would add to that reputation). It could be that we think they're oil-rich and don't need help (though, obviously, they need more than just royalty checks to build a sustainable economy). It could be that our economy's still to much of a mess and we hope we don't have to volunteer (tsk-tsk). It could be that we are buying the Iraqi PR and we think we'll be out of there in a month (letting one tyranny replace another; that would be irresponsible, wouldn't it?).
There's no excuse. We should be reaching out to help build a successful society -- a tolerant society that accepts its various flavors of Islam (not just the biggest) as well as outsiders; a robust economy that shares the wealth of oil broadly and uses it to build a stronger base of expertise and value; a learned culture that builds on the land's tremendous history and creates a future based on free sharing of information and opinions.
But instead, when I go to Google News and search for "Iraq" and "charity," what I get are links about British MP George Galloway allegedly using a charity to take money from Saddam Hussein; an indictment for using a charity to send money to Saddam; heads of charities protesting war; and problems with getting charity to Iraq. And I see this disturbing note: "U.S.-based relief agencies are mobilizing to feed and heal Iraq, but so far they are straining to illustrate the need to potential donors and reach those who are suffering. The chaos of war -- followed by rampant looting and lawlessness -- is partly to blame, they say, and many who might give are only beginning to focus on the plight of Iraqis. There has been no huge refugee crisis to galvanize donors, the agencies point out. Delay in sending relief could hamper the American campaign to demonstrate good will toward Iraq and quickly relieve widespread suffering."
I'm a bit ashamed of us.
: Now as I'm thinking this through, I come across a fascinating story at the oddly named site Killing The Buddah by Tim Shorrock, the son of missionaries who went to Japan after World War II with the blessing and active support of Douglas McArthur and our occupation government. So began one of the strangest episodes of the Cold War: MacArthur's attempt to harness Christianity in his mission to transform Japan into an anti-communist and pro-American bastion of democracy. Between 1946 and 1950, over 2,000 American teachers, social workers and evangelists came to Japan in response to a recruitment drive launched by mainstream churches and blessed at the highest levels of the U.S. government....
Going by numbers alone, the American crusade was a miserable failure. In the political turbulence after World War II, millions of Japanese joined the Japanese Communist Party and aligned themselves with the Japanese Left to organize and join labor unions and demonstrate against the spread and testing of nuclear weapons. Fifty-six years after the war, the number of Japanese who call themselves Christians remains around one-half of one percent of the population, the same level it was before Pearl Harbor.
But judged on human terms, the American missionary influx after 1945 was profound; it helped heal the wounds of war and exposed the defeated Japanese to a new kind of American, neither businessman nor soldier, willing to forgo the comforts of home to share in the uncertainties and poverty of postwar Japan. "They were young and idealistic, and identified with Japan," recalls Kiyoko Takeda Cho, a prominent Christian intellectual who lives in Tokyo and was one of my parents’ first Japanese friends. "They represented not the ruling country, but came for reconciliation." : The last thing we should be doing -- the very last thing -- is trying to convert a single Iraqi to any other religion.
What we should be trying to do is help Iraqis build a strong and vibrant future -- and that means immediate humanitarian aid for food and medicine; it means long-term economic aid to build an economy that is based on more than oil; it means educational aid that helps demonstrate the power of free thinking; it means media aid to help demonstrate the power of free speech; it means political aid to help them build a democracy (which isn't easy!). The more we help build a strong future for Iraq, the better it will be for everyone: For Iraq and for our own reputation.
But charity starts at home -- that is, it starts with giving here, from the anti-war side who said they care about the people of Iraq and the pro-war side who said the same. And I'm not seeing dollars or fingers raised to do that.
On radio, nobody needs to know you're naked
: Anne Gerrels, NPR's brave correspondent, is back from Baghdad with tales of war: From her hotel in Baghdad, Garrels used a smuggled satellite phone to file her reports in the dark of night, a measure designed to elude ever-watchful Iraqi security officials.
"I decided that it would be very smart if I broadcast naked," Garrels recounts. "If, God forbid, the secret police were coming through the rooms, that would give me maybe five minutes to answer the door, pretend I'd been asleep, sort of go 'I don't have any clothes on,' and give me maybe a few seconds, minutes, to hide the phone."
Irrelevance
: The Catholic archbishop of Baghdad's view of Iraq's future: Archbishop Sleiman said it is wrong to try to impose democracy through force on a people who do not yet fully understand democratic concepts, including the proper relationship between religion and government. What a hock of hooey. What would he prefer? Tyranny? Theocracy? Anarchy? [via Ibidem]
Hero in the house
: The man who tipped us to Pfc. Lynch's location is headed to the U.S. [via au Currant]
Bubble boy busted
: Frank Quattrone behind bars.
About time
: I've been screaming for years that Take Your Daughter To Work Day is sexist. Well, it's fixed. Thursday is take your whatever to work day. I'm taking my son.
Big blog news!
: Movable Type announces its version of Blogspot (hosted blogging), Typepad. Bravo. And Movable Type announces the hiring of Anil Dash as VP of Big Stuff. Bravo II.
Sina Motallebi update:
: Hoder reports: He has a lawyer now. Association for Iranian journalists has appointed a lawyer for him.
Incoming
: Every morning, I check out my Technorati link cosmos to find out who's linking to me and what they're saying. This, after all, is the true dialogue, the real community among weblogs. It's not just in the email, it's not just in the comments (though I love them), it's really in the links. I'll admit to a little snobbery: I first look at the links that come from sites that themselves have lots of incoming links; it's link juice. But I also look at the lonely voices in the woods who have no links. A few stops on my tour this morning:
: Page 3 Girls (got your attention?) says, regarding the arrest of Sina Motallebi: Mr. Motallebi ... is in jail in Iran because he did what Tim Robbins, Susan Sarandon, Janeane Garofalo, Michael Moore, Martin Sheen, Ed Asner, Alec Baldwin, Jane Fonda and one-third of the Dixie Chicks can do in the United States with complete freedom and protection from the law (despite their contentions to the contrary): Expressed an opinion about the government. The conditions Motallebi now endures are completely unlike those faced by anti-war protestors whose contrived acts of civil disobedience get them temporarily thrown in some local lockup. : On the news below that his paper is going to start charging for reading Robert Fisk, Dustbury wonders: Actually, if The Independent really wants to make some serious cash, what they should do is register Robert Fisk's name as a trademark, and then demand royalties every time a blogger Fisks™ somebody. : To my great relief, after months of prowar harping and anti-terrorist haranguing, I still have my political credentials intact: Kevin Holtsberry accuses me of "leftist overreaction" in my slap at Sen. Sanctimonious and the Presbyterian homophobes.
: Ryan Olson says the arrest of Motallebi changes his mind about something: I never really bought that Weblogs As An Important Journalistic Advance theory, but when you read stories about Iranian students being arrested for their writings it seems like there's something interesting going on. : Oliver Willis says I'm "willfully ignorant," which I think is a step above being ignorantly ignorant.
: And lots of good people are spreading the word, the way we do, by linking to reports on Motallebi's arrest.
Sina Motallebi update
: From Editor:Myself: : Sina has come home with some officers. They wanted to obtain some more documents, maybe his PC, books, notes, videos, etc.
: Former deputy of Interior minister, Mostafa Tajzadeh, has condemned the arrest and said that why do they make young people angry with these kind of actions.
April 22, 2003
Mom!
: I'm watching Madonna on MTV right now and I'm struck not by the pretentious celeb slather, not by the mediocre music, not by the religion for idiots, not even by the self-centered ego of it all. I'm struck by her age: She's old enough to be the mother to everyone in her audience -- the slutty divorced mom from down the street.
It's turn off pretentious bores week
: Here are people I hate:
1. Open-mouthed chewers. I don't need to hear you digest.
2. People who say they watch only PBS. Snobs.
3. The people behind TV Turnoff Week. So we should teach our children to turn off a source of news, information, drama, comedy, humanity, entertainment; that's a fine lesson. Would you be offended if I suggested Shut the Books week? I'll bet you would. But there's just as much crap on bookshelves as on airwaves (take a look at the best-seller section and then argue with me). This is just censorship by mob: Instead of destroying the art, we try to intimidate the audience. This is patronizing, anti-populist, anti-democratic, show-off crap.
4. People who don't wear deodorant in the summer.
5. Jacques Chirac.
Busted
: Dan Gillmor tries to draw a parallel between what's happening in Iran -- where they arrested blogger Sina Motallebi -- and here: Jailing political opponents isn't our style in the U.S., but just about every policy our current government favors would make it harder for average people to get news that's contrary to the conventional wisdom -- and the Bush administration, the most secretive in decades, is no friend of untrammeled speech in any event. Huh? Sorry, friend, but that makes no sense. What is happening here that has the slightest resemblance to arresting a man for what he says online? What's happening in Iran is serious and dangerous. What was happening in Iraq (pre-war) was serious and deadly. What's happening here? Nothing.
Gitmo kids
: News.com.au says child terrorists are begin held at Gitmo. Really?
Our American Taliban
: Everybody and his gay uncle has already hopped on the hopping stupidity of Pa. Sen. Rick Santorum's comments trying to equate homosexuality with bigamy, polygamy, incest, adultery, and probably Communism, too. Two-parent families, says Santorum, are good. Requiring people to work is good. So is banning late-term abortions and giving religion a greater role in government. Traditional welfare, on the other hand, hurts the family. Homosexuality, feminism, liberalism all undermine the family. Even parts of the Constitution can harm the family.
"If the Supreme Court says that you have the right to consensual (gay) sex within your home, then you have the right to bigamy, you have the right to polygamy, you have the right to incest, you have the right to adultery. You have the right to anything," the Pennsylvania lawmaker said in a recent interview, fuming over a landmark gay rights case before the high court that pits a Texas sodomy law against equality and privacy rights. That's as frightening as it is stupid. Jack Balkin, smart law professor, dissects other issues this raises and sees hope in calling this the last desperate gasp of the gay-bashing right. But that's not my point.
And before I get to my point, also consider this story today out of Sinsinnati: A Mount Auburn Presbyterian minister was found guilty Monday of marrying gays and lesbians in the denomination's first ecclesiastical trial dealing with the church constitutional issue. As I've said here before, this is just why I left the Presbyterian Church: because it has become an institution of hate and bigotry that thinks it should judge God's creations, because it is no place to raise my children. But that, too, is not my point.
And now consider this, on the Shia majority in Iraq threatening to impose a theocracy and bloody-stump Sharia law: :Ayatollah al-Sadr would have wanted an Islamic government for Iraq, based on the Koran and on Sharia (Islamic law). “It will be a different kind of democracy from the West. We believe that the aims of America are different from the aims of Islam,” Abdullarida al-Nasiriyah, a teacher from Basra, said....
Shias in Najaf seem to be undecided about the desirability of the harsher aspects of Islamic law, such as amputation for thieves and the stoning to death of adulterers. But women, they insist, will have to cover themselves in public.
And, according to Ayatollah Salih al-Taiee, one of Najaf’s leading clerics: “We will fight to prevent the drinking of alcohol.” This need not be undemocratic, he said. The logic is that since Shias make up a majority of the population and since all Shias believe in Islamic law, the Sharia codes represent the will of the Iraqi people.“This is a chance for America and Britain to show their respect for Islam in an Islamic country. If they do not, there will be great hatred against them, ” the Ayatollah added. Now here's my point: Religious fanatics scare me -- and not just Muslim religious fanatics who try to kill me. We have religious fanatics in our country, too. We have them in our Senate. We have them leading one of our largest allegedly mainline denominations. They have the religious freedom to do as they please; that is their sacred right -- their only sacred right -- in our country. But they do not have the freedom to impose their religion on others. That is the protection all are afforded. And that is the protection we must afford the Iraqis. For this Ayatollah to say that imposing religious tyranny is democratic is, of course, bullshit. For him to say that if he doesn't get to do that, he'll hate (read: kill) us is a threat. We can't allow the fanatics to rule fanatically. Does that mean we are imposing democracy, modernism, (gasp) Westernism on them? Call it what you want but yes: The people -- not the Ayatollahs, not the tyrants -- must rule without tyranny and fear and with freedom for all. That's the starting line. That is one thing that all Americans, hell, all civilized people -- left, right, prowar, antiwar -- must support: That is how we must define freedom for Iraq.
Those wacky Frenchmen
: From the world of sports: A French soccer player who celebrated a goal by stripping his shirt and putting his hand down his shorts was fired Tuesday by his Turkish team....
"It was not against anyone. It was just a private sign of joy,'' Nouma said.
Now you can boycott him
: The Independent is going to start charging for some online content -- including all stories by Robert Fisk, reports Vin Crosbie at Poynter's media blog (do damned permalinks; scroll till you find it).
How's that for a straight line?...
Hey, they should pay us to read him....
When he's wrong, will they give us a refund?...
Will he donate his cut to victims of war and imperialism?....
Did they ever think that the readers of Alternet don't have disposable income?...
Brazillian bloggers get rich
: While you're on that page, keep scrolling down until you find an interesting item reporting that Brazillian bloggers are invited to submit posts to the local Reader's Digest; the best every month will get picked up and paid $100.
Whatever happened to...
: Now this is a good idea for reality TV: Fox stations are turning Classmates.com into a TV show (without the damned popups). I assume we'll see homecoming queens turned into fat drunks; geeks turned into millionaires; high school sweethearts long since broken up and then divorced brought back togther....
Another mail attack?
: FoxNews is reporting that mail with a white powder found in the Tacoma post office has tested positive for a biotoxin. These preliminary tests are always less reliable. I'm finding nothing online about this yet.
: Here's a story from KOMO. Workers arrived for the graveyard shift at about 1 a.m. when a few discovered two envelopes with powder inside. A witness told KOMO 4 News that one envelope was addressed to a state government employee, the other to someone in Sequim. Fox is showing National Guard soldiers there with special tents used for testing.
: I will say that I'm impressed (and comforted) seeing the quick response with fancy equipment.
: The Dept. of Homeland Security says preliminary tests -- insert standing caveat emphasizing preliminary -- indicate the presence of plague or botulism, says Fox.
: The latest update: Homeland Security says no biotoxins. Nevermind.
April 21, 2003
Who's for what?
: The Guardian says the BBC is pro-war. If you try to parse that sentence, you will go insane.
Free Sina Motallebi
: A few notes on the jailed Iranian blogger:
: His weblog is no longer available; it's just blank. (Here it is in the Google cache.)
: You can sign a petition addressed to various dignitaries on his behalf here.
: Here's a banner in support of Motallebi created by another blogger, who is not posting it on his site because of a family connection in Iran. So I'm posting it here. Feel free to use it.
: Hossein Derakhshan, aka hoder, the blogger behind Editor: Myself, broke this news. Here's his latest report: More bad news are coming these days in Iran: daily paper, "Arya", which was to be re-published is banned; some other young female reporters (including Masoumeh "Masih" Alinejad) are in court, and many others that I can't remember now. Seems to me that hard-liners have started a new wave of pressure and this time they are targeting young journalists and activists. : See also this piece about the impact of weblogs on Iran by hoder: During the past 20 months, more than 10,000 Persian weblogs have been emerged. Their authors mostly live in Iran, where the number of Internet users hardly exceeds a half million....
The popularity of weblogs among young Iranians, suggests that great changes has happened in Iranian society during the past two decades, at least among the new generations of middle-class residents of big cities.... Individuality, self-expression, tolerance are new values which are quite obvious through a quick study of the content of Persian weblogs....
: They have provided first-hand reports from several events such as students protests;
: they have helped young people find new dates or know more about potential dates, in lack of legitimate dating services;
: they have helped parents to get to know more about their children’s values and norms;
: they have provided Iranian immigrants outside of Iran with first-hand information about the new and unofficial Iran (new values, new lifestyle, new slang etc.);
: some of well-known webloggers have been hired by newspaper publishers to write for them, something they had never had a chance;
: they have attracted several of top officials and politicians as their regular reader, in some cases they have commented on some posts in some weblogs;... : Note that last bullet. In January, hoder wrote about the attention -- good and bad -- that weblogs have been getting in Iran: I'm not exactly sure if this has happend anywhere else. But some top officials are not only reading and following Persian weblogs, but also are responding to and commenting about some posts in popular weblogs. : Some of you have scoffed at my suggestion that weblog newspapers can help develop new freedom of expression and ultimately freedom of the press in Iraq. Well, see what weblogs have brought to Iran, a country struggling with democracy and then imagine what they could do in Iraq. But see, also, the attention that weblogs are getting in Iran at all levels and the unfortunate results that can occur: namely, repression of the free speech weblogs enable. Persian weblogs need support just as Iranian and Iraqi democracy need support.
An Iranian blogger's perspective on the war
: I traded email today with hoder (above) about Motallebi and also about weblogs. I said I wished for more connections between Persian weblogs and English-language blogs. Language is clearly an issue but blogs such as hoder's, in English, are bridges. I said that as soon as I started reading and linking to German weblogs, I found that they started doing the same to me; conversations started; friendships formed. The German bloggers and I don't always agree but I think we respect each other and enjoy each others' virtual company. I hope for the same links to bloggers from Iran and soon Iraq and other Arab countries. It can only help.
Well, as I read deeper into hoder's blog, I found an interview he did with Sayed Pouya Razavi, the creator of Blogshares and an Iranian (now in the UK). There was a link to Razavi's own blog and there I found fascinating reaction to the end of the Iraq war. He is glad that Saddam is gone. Yet he opposed the war as immoral. But he blames the ineffectual peace movement for the war itself. The world should rejoice at the fall of Saddam's brutal regime....
I've always found the anti-war movement in the West niave and ignorant shielded by the comforts of a Western life and pretentiously dipping their toes into "Eastern Culture" as if it was some fad or fashion....
In the end, the anti-war movement contributed to this happening. Their inneffectiveness, their lack of focus and lack of solutions handed the war to the warmongers. It gave them exactly what they needed: a disorganised rabble that appealed only to its own kind.... [dominated by] the voices of suburbanite white kids whose arguments degenerated into name calling and wishy-washy anti-globalisation rants....
Yet, I think I'm beginning to realise that there is no anti-war movement. There never was. There are some smart folks who are opposed to this war but there is no movement. He is unsure about the future, torn between two views: One accepts the Bush/Blair line that we do come in peace, that 9.11 changed everything, that there can and will be a future without dictators. The other view fears that this will become a world of Us v. Them: Muslims already know their peaceful religion has been subverted in the public mind by a few rogues and the whole of Christendom is set against them. It always has been, the terrorists just confirmed ancient prejudices. For all its glorious progress European cultures haven't shaken off the yoke of Islamaphobia as they haven't for the most part shaken off the scourge of anti-semiticism. Faced with this reality and the bleak prospects ahead, what other choice is there but to resist by all available means? He says the next chapter in this story -- the next front in this war -- will be in Iran or Syria or America.
It's a fascinating essay. What I agree with and disagree with is not the point. What weblogs let us do is compare views of the world from across the world. Weblogs are a powerful tool. Iran's government, unfortunately, realizes that. Then so must we.
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