BuzzMachine... by Jeff Jarvis

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).

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Smoking guns
: The Telegraph says it has found a bin Laden-Saddam link.

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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....

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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.

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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.

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If ever a place needed a bar and its residents a drink...
: Afghanistan's only bar has been shut by a terorrist threat.

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Political primary, Iraqi style
: The (still impressive) Christian Science Monitor blog reports that the CIA's candidate to lead Iraq was assassinated by Shiites.

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Naked truth
: Matt Welch is one of the few to have seen something truly frightening before I took it down.

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Problogging
: Go read Ken Layne on the case of the newspaper blogger who was shut down.

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