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December 06, 2003

New sheriff in town
: Dan Okrent gets off to a good start as public editor of The Times.

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45 minutes
: An Iraqi colonel now says he was behind the infamous British intelligence claim that Iraqis could launch a deadly attack in 45 minutes.

When shown the information about the 45-minute claim in the Iraq WMD dossier issued by the Government in September 2002, he said: "I am the one responsible for providing this. Forget 45 minutes, we could have fired these within half an hour."

The Telegraph, which broke the story, says:

The only reason that these weapons were not used, said Col al-Dabbagh, was because the bulk of the Iraqi army did not want to fight for Saddam. "The West should thank God that the Iraqi army decided not to fight," he said.
"If the army had fought for Saddam Hussein and used these weapons there would have been terrible consequences."

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Le Carre's screed
: John le Carre's new novel is about out and the Observer goes gaga over this too-timely screed in the book:

'That war on Iraq was illegitimate... it was a criminal and immoral conspiracy. No provocation, no link with al-Qaeda, no weapons of Armageddon. Tales of complicity and Osama were self-serving bullshit. It was an old colonial war dressed up as a crusade for Western life and liberty, and it was launched by a clique of war-hungry Judaeo-Christian geopolitical fantasists who hijacked the media and exploited America's post-Nine Eleven psychopathy.'

Colonial war? No, mate, you should know better: That assumes we want to move into Iraq. That was how you Brits ran the world. We want only to get back home (if too soon).
When he wrote about Communism and the cold war, le Carre understood and expressed the subtlety of it. Judging from this there's no subtlety left in his weltanschauung or his writing.

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Davos on blogs
: Just found this session on blogs -- "Will Mainstream Media Co-opt Blogs and the Internet?" -- on the World Economic Forum agenda for its January meeting in Davos:

Traditional media sources are still the primary source of information; however, Internet news sites, especially non-mainstream outlets like blogs, are challenging journalism's traditional rules. 1) How is the media landscape evolving? 2) What are the implications of this revolution for traditional media suppliers, producers and viewers? 3) How should the mainstream media make competitive use of these new outlets?

Hmmm. Wonder who's on that panel. (Update: I now see that, of course, Joi is; I should have looked at Joi's site first. Any preview, Joi?) As a big media-little media guy, I'll volunteer...
And I think the title has it exactly backwards: Will little media coopt big media is a better way to look at the question....
And don't just think in big-country big-media terms. Look at the Iranian weblog revolution for the true potential of this new medium. Talk about globalization!

: I added my 2 cents into the comments here. And see Doc's 10 cents here. Dave Winer agrees: They asked the question quite backwards.

: This one looks intriguing, too:

The different approaches to reporting the War in Iraq and its continuing aftermath have illustrated the lack of consensus on journalistic and editorial norms. With states, media owners and audiences demanding reporting, which mirrors individual beliefs as opposed to impartiality and objectivity, the legitimacy of media is challenged and threatened. 1) Do the divergent styles of reporting on television and in the press represent a healthy plurality? Or are they a disturbing new trend away from objectivity? 2) Is there a 'correct' way to report issues -- certain journalistic norms -- or are all approaches equally valid? 3) Will future reporting become more partial as news organizations try to satisfy target audiences?

I posted this in Loic's blog:
I think you need to look at this not from established media's perspective but from the perspective of the people.
I am fond of saying that thanks to the Internet and weblogs, the people now finally own the printing press and gain its power.
And I'm a big media guy (who also now lives in the world of small media).
Most big-media organizations are starting to look at this -- if at all -- the way you do: How do we take our content and put it into weblogs?
That's the wrong question and the wrong answer.
What they should be paying attention to is the tremendous new content, new information, new news, new viewpoints, new diversity coming from the people who are creating weblogs. Rather than trying to do their own weblogs, why not start by listening to what is being said in the weblogs the people formerly known as the audience are producing? Why not embrace their content, their information, their viewpoints?
Weblogs expand the world of media tremendously.
Media needs that, just as the industry is being hit with new competition and new pressure (e.g., losing millions in classifieds to new players and new relationships; losing channels of sale for magazines; losing the mass audience TV had...).
This is the extension of the nichefecation of media that has been occurring ever since we got the remote control.
But even more important, look at Iran, where one person started a revolution in weblogs; in less than two years, there are now an estimated 100,000 Iranian weblogs writing about politics, sex, women's rights, music -- things forbidden in that country. And they are writing in English as well to get their story to the rest of the world, a story that otherwise could not get out.
This is not about big media dipping its toes into little media.
This is about little media setting the agenda and the future of news and information.

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The wrong memorial
: In tomorrow's Times' Arts & Leisure section Michael Kimmelman identifies the right problem and the wrong solution for the World Trade Center memorial.

...now that everyone agrees that the ground zero memorial finalists are a disappointment, there's only one thing to do.
Throw them all out.
You have the power to do so. Use it. This is in part a memorial to extreme bravery in the face of overwhelming force. Here's a chance to be brave.

OK, fine. That is becoming the quiet consensus of New York.
But Kimmelman's solution is all too much of The Times: He argues that the solution is elitism.
He wants to name a bunch of high-reputation architects to take it over.
But it is architects who created this mess.
Architects gave us a mess of a World Trade Center design and set impossible conditions for the memorial.
Architects dominated the jury.
Architects designed the finalists.
Architects speaking to architects, that's where we are now.
But Kimmelman thinks that the process was just too populist, too banal, too common.

Forget vapid populism. Limit the competition to participants of the jury's expert choosing. Then let the jury select the best plan, if and when there is one. If that's elitism, so be it....
The jurors should put together a group of the most serious artists and architects, so many of whom declined to participate in the original omnium gatherum, and see where their specialized talents could lead us.
That would be antipopulist--and perhaps a political fiasco. But it would be the right thing to do.

How very Times.
No, it's elitism that got us this far.
Don't judge the process on the results thus far; don't judge the entrants on those selected; judge the jury.
I don't necessarily trust this jury to find the right memorial. They certainly haven't done it so far. And thus I certainly don't trust them to find elite architects to start over.
Why don't we first look at the 5,201 submissions; why don't we judge their heart and soul and vision; why don't we find an essential idea -- instead of the overbaked muddles we ended up with out of this juried process?
A truly wise jury would look at all those submissions and find one essential idea that speaks for this memorial and for the memory and for the future. And if it is not there in those 5,201 heartfelt submissions, then they would seek more ideas and seek more time to make this decision properly.
But this, I fear, is not that jury.

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Weblogs with halo
: Internet pioneer Jacques Vallee tells Om Malik that weblogs are the salvation of the Internet.

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Op-ed scandal?
: Josh Marshall says there's an op-ed payola scandal brewing.

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Al Franken, liberal host
: Well, I'm hurt I wasn't invited.
Eric Alterman reports that he and "about a dozen and a half journalists, writers and the odd historian, poet and cartoonist" were invited to Al Franken's livingroom to talk with John Kerry. He also namedrops that Rick Hertzberg and Art Spiegelman were there. Wouldn't you love to see the rest of that guest list? La creme de la Upper West Side.
Eric says he doesn't endorse candidates but this sure smells like an endorsement:

Let’s be blunt. Kerry was terrific. Once again, he demonstrated a thoughtfulness, knowledge base and value system that gives him everything, in my not-so-humble-opinion—he could need to be not just a good, but a great president. I feel certain that just about everyone in that highly self-regarding room left deeply impressed.

Then Eric tries to singlehandedly fix Kerry's campaign, set him straight, and get him elected:

I put this to Kerry as the first question: “Senator,” I said (or something like this), “I think you may be the most qualified candidate in the race and perhaps also the one who best represents my own liberal values. But there was one overriding issue facing this nation during the past four years and Howard Dean was there when it counted and you weren’t. A lot of people feel that that moment entitles him to their vote even if you have a more progressive record and would be a stronger candidate in November. How are you going to win back those people who you lost with your vote for this awful war?”
Kerry and I had what candidates call a “spirited exchange” in which he defended his vote. He said he felt betrayed by George Bush, whom he had believed, had not yet made up his mind to go to war when the vote was taken. He never expected a unilateral war given the way Powell, Scowcroft, Eagleberger and others were speaking at the time. He defends his willingness to trust the president of the United States, but now realizes that this was a big mistake. At one point, after answering somebody else’s question, he turned back to me and pointedly—one might even say “passionately”—insisted, “And Eric, if you truly believe that if I had been president, we would be at war in Iraq right now, then you shouldn’t vote for me.”

Well, I'd have respect and support for Kerry if he said he supported the war for good reason and then he can argue all he wants with the before-and-after execution of that war. But that's not what Alterman et al want to hear. They want to put Howard Dean's words in Kerry's mouth.

[Yes, I said John Dean when I meant Howard Dean. Sleep deprivation. Snow blindness. Wimpy Starbucks closing just because of a measly blizzard. Those are my excuses. Pick one.]

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Ahem. Remember us?
: Typepad is getting new features. Time for us Movable Typists to act like the jealous older siblings who are jealous of all the attention the cute new baby is getting.
What I really want for Christmas is the ability to email posts to my blog.
And I want somebody to get Anil, Mena, and/or Ben a Treo 600 for Christmas so they are motivated to make MT work well with it and other mobile devices (the biggest problem is the limit on the size of any given text block for input or editing on the browser... leading to the need for a Palm-friendly blogging ap).
I'd like to see a list of what MT is getting and a schedule. Please?

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Alms for Americans
: I couldn't resist this headline in the Independent:

Now America is history:
This is the European century
This could be the moment when the balance of advantage tipped back across the Atlantic

Using the end of the steel tarrif as her jumping off point, Mary Dejevsky says (if you want to read it all, you have to pay; a few choice excerpts):

This could well be the moment when the balance of moral, political and material advantage tipped back across the Atlantic, from the new world to the old; the moment, in fact, when the global ascendancy of the United States started to wane, and the European Century began....
The day when America is no longer "top dog", however, may be closer than Washington imagines. On steel, the US was held to account by an international body, the WTO, that it had been instrumental in creating. But it was the strength of the EU that made the agreement stick. And the strength of the euro - at record levels against the dollar - is evidence of more international confidence in Europe than Europeans themselves appreciate....
Economic strength and multilateralism are not Europe's only strengths. Health systems whose first principle is that all should be treated, regardless of income; social security nets that - mostly - prevent the abject poverty and social division that are so near the surface in the US; working hours and holidays that try to allow a life outside work.
Europe may not live up to all its aspirations. But it is these co-operative and social principles, not the imperatives of competition and domination, that increasingly have global appeal. Welcome to the century of Europe.

Dream on, lady, dream on. Europe is, in fact, making a last gasp effort to matter. That's what the EU is: a gross admission of weakness and hasbeenedness.
Our economy is stronger. Our work ethic is stronger (Germany and France are suffering under the weight of all their vacations and spa days and giveways). Political strength? I don't see you doing anything to fix the Middle East, Europe. Moral strength? Odd from a continent that brags so much about not going to church.
But this isn't even the debate. Europe is not the future, it is the past. We're not the future, either. The real question is whether China and Asia will be able to consolidate their size as strength, economic and political. And if we succeed in Iraq and build a beachhead for democracy and modernity, if the Middle East decides to join the millenium, then I predict that could become a center of more action than Europe.
The European century? Dream on, lady, dream on.

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Blog fashion
: Why can't we make T-shirts this cool? [via Moe]

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Defying labels
: Dean Esmay gets this off his chest about labeling people neocon. He starts with a history of the term and then says:

What's bizarre is that, since 9/11, angry left-wing critics have started dubbing just about everyone who disagrees with them on defense matters a "neocon." Democrat, Republican, socialist, capitalist, it doesn't matter. If you supported the effort to liberate Iraq, you are a "neocon."
People who've considered themselves conservative Republicans their whole lives, like Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld, are now routinely called "neocons." Democrats who support the war effort get called "neocons." People who voted for Gore who think Iraq was the right thing to do are called "neocons." Pretty much anybody who thinks that America needed to take out Saddam Hussein and start the process of reforming the thug-regimes of the Middle East, or who thinks the liberal democratic state of Israel has a right to exist and is not the moral equivalent of Yassir Arafat's terrorist-regime, is now dubbed a "neocon."
There is also a subtle undercurrent among some (not all, but some) who use the term that a "neocon" is really someone who's either Jewish, or secretly influenced by Zionist thinkers.

He's right but I find just as frequently that just supporting the war gets you labeled "right-wing." It all sinks to the level of a playground argument.

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Outing anti-Semitism
: Julie Burchill writes her much-anticipated followup column on anti-Semitism too damned close to home. Her lead:

In 1967, Martin Luther King Jr published his Letter To An Anti-Zionist Friend: "Anti-Zionism is inherently anti-semitic, and ever will be. What is anti-Zionism? It is the denial to the Jewish people of a fundamental right that we justly claim for the people of Africa and freely accord all other nations of the globe. It is discrimination against Jews... because they are Jews. In short, it is anti-semitism." MLK - what a mensch!

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Elections as a reality show
: A few months ago, FX announced and then dropped American Candidate, a reality show in which a real people would run a shadow presidential campaign. Now Showtime appears ready to pick it up.
But it appears that lawyers and bureaucrats and ruining the show -- and taking democracy down with them.
What was great, absolutely great about this idea in its original form was that the winner on the show would run a campaign. And what's great about that is that the candidates and the media would have to deal with what that person said and thus we, the people could suddenly set the agenda again: We could raise issues without all the constraints of parties, special interests, political correctness, and, frankly, the need to win. It brought populism back to politics.
But now Showtime is going to the FEC to get bureacratic dispensation:

Among the concerns the election commission may address: What if the winner becomes so popular he or she runs for real public office? What if the winner endorses an actual candidate? What if the contestants use their platform to promote or disparage President Bush or his Democratic opponent?

Yeah, and what if they do? What the hell is wrong with any of that? It's called free speech, you twits. It's called America. We all have the perfect right to endorse candidates. We all have the right to disparage candidates. Since when did we need to get permission?

"I don't know what it says about the state of American politics that you might have to get people interested through a reality series," said Larry Noble, head of the Center for Responsive Politics and former FEC general counsel. "But if it gets more people interested in the real campaign, it's not a bad thing."

Now isn't that a condescending attitude. If people aren't listening to candidates, could it be that the candidates don't have anything worthwhile to say? [via Lost Remote]

: More election idiocy: Some stations are refusing to carry Saturday Night Live with Al Sharpton because they fear triggering equal-time rules.

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Blog cards
: Hugh McLeod, the wonderful cartoons-on-the-backs-of-business-cards guy and always cogent commenter here, is going to start making business cards again and I'll order some because at blog confabs, blog parties, and other blog events, I want to hand out a card with my blog address instead of my business card. I need blog cards. Don't you?

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Saddam has left the building
: Zeyad says people are seeing Saddam everywhere:

It is accepted as common wisdom today in Iraq that Saddam Hussein has been always on the run since April 9 and that he rarely sleeps twice in the same location. There is evidence that he regularly changes his trusted bodyguards and even executes some of them if he feels they are less 'loyal' to him than they used to be. All other evidence points out to the fact that he had properly planned for this probably for some months before the war, and had prepared secret hideouts that are unkown by anyone but himself with an appropriate amount of cash. Saddam had lived most of his life in hiding, he is now doing what he knows best.
Many people from various locations all over Iraq have alleged meeting Saddam all of a sudden....

And he lists a host of Saddam rumored sightings.

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