BuzzMachine... by Jeff Jarvis

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.irc password porno

LINK | Comments (11)

Free Sina Motallebi
: A few notes on the jailed Iranian blogger:irc password porno

: His weblog is no longer available; it's just blank. (Here it is in the Google cache.)irc password porno

: 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. irc password porno

: 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.irc password porno

LINK | Comments (3)

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.irc password porno

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.irc password porno

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.irc password porno

LINK | Comments (2)

What, no Taco Bell?
: Yes, evil Americanism spreads to Baghdad. Burger King and Pizza Hut have opened there. But it was the British who brought them. [via Ryan Pitts]irc password porno

LINK | Comments (7)

The atrocities pile up
: Gravediggers outside Baghdad point us to a mass grave for political prisoners holding up to 1,000 victims:

He said all the dead that arrived during the last three years he worked at the cemetery were aged between 15 and 30, men and women who had been shot or hanged.
"They were all youths ... the civilians were hanged, sometimes a soldier would come through and they were all shot ... I could distinguish them by their uniforms," he said through an interpreter.

They killed their own youth for their opinions.irc password porno

: And more. Newsweek and the LA Times received documents from Saddam's secret police and in their reporting, this is just one flavor of Saddam's terror:

While NEWSWEEK’s Melinda Liu was analyzing the IIS documents in Baghdad, Rod Nordland was piecing together another part of the Saddam story from both Baath Party documents and interviews in the southern city of Basra. One former prisoner he talked to, Anwar Abdul Razak, remembers when a surgeon kissed him on each cheek, said he was sorry and cut his ears off. Razak, then 21 years old, had been swept up during one of Saddam Hussein’s periodic crackdowns on deserters from the Army. Razak says he was innocently on leave at the time, but no matter; he had been seized by some Baath Party members who earned bounties for catching Army deserters. At Basra Hospital, Razak’s ears were sliced off without painkillers. He said he was thrown into jail with 750 men, all with bloody stumps where their ears had been. “They called us Abu [Arabic for father] Earless,” recalls Razak, whose fiancee left him because of his disfigurement.
No one is sure how many men were mutilated during that particular spasm of terror, but from May 17 to 19, 1994, all the available surgeons worked shifts at all of Basra’s major hospitals, lopping off ears. (One doctor who refused was shot.) Today, Dr. Jinan al-Sabagh, an administrator at Basra Teaching Hospital, insists that the victims numbered only “70 or 80,” but he’d prefer not to talk about it.

irc password porno

LINK | Comments (3)

Calling PETA
: Starving lions in the Baghdad zoo claw their way out; go after U.S. soldiers (does this count as a protest?); they're shot.irc password porno

LINK | Comments (1)

Terror
: Two men are arrested videotaping the Ambassador Bridge in Detroit and are found to have dynamite and shotgun shells in their car.
The first question you want to ask isn't answered in many of the stories I found; it is in this one: Yes, they are Arab-American. Sadly, it matters.irc password porno

LINK | Comments (5)

Today
: I'm pulling a Reynolds (aka taking a day off); will be back on this afternoon. irc password porno

LINK | Comments (0)