BuzzMachine... by Jeff Jarvis

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.

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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."

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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?

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Amen to that
: Rumsfeld says the government of Iraq will not be an Iranian-style government run by clerics. Finally, somebody said it.

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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."

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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