« May 06, 2004 | Main
| May 08, 2004 »

May 07, 2004

Middleground
: David Weinberger tries to find a middleground and I think he succeeds:

I am willing to admit that there are circumstances in which torture is permissible, just as I think sometimes we have to kill people. And I'm willing to admit that what we apparently put the Abu Ghraib prisoners through wasn't nearly as bad as the torture that's routine in many other countries.
Is the right willing to admit that: Torture should only be used in the direst of circumstances? Torture should never be a cause for the exulting shown in the photos? The people responsible for allowing the wholesale torture at Abu Ghraib need to be punished severely, quickly and publicly not only for the sake of justice but to try to limit some of the damage the practice has done to our war on terror?
Can we get even to that common ground? Can we as a nation say that we abhor torture, except in the rarest of cases? That we do not believe in the institutionalizing of torture? That we will fight it around the world? That we believe in the rule of law and that no one is above the law? That we believe in treating even our enemies with dignity? That we support the established international conventions for treating prisoners? That we are sorry about what went on at Abu Ghraib?

In a word: Yes.

LINK | Comments (51)

Marketing genius
: Seth Godin's new book, Free Prize Inside, comes inside brilliant packaging: A cereal box with wowy-zowy graphics. They work. My 7-year-old couldn't wait to open it. She was rather disappointed to find only a book inside.

LINK | Comments (1)

Yawn
: Another dinosaur columnist thinks he's cute dismissing blogs. This one is notably insipid.

LINK | Comments (21)

Cover the convention
: NZ Bear reports that the Democrats are welcoming bloggers to cover the convention (which will help liven things up). Republicans?

LINK | Comments (3)

Confab
: Britt Blaser and Doc Searls just sent along word of a New York conference on (liberal) politics and online at the New School. The las time I went there, I couldn't get wi-fi or even cell coverage to blog. Hoping somebody can fix it for a session about blogs and such. I'm planning to sign up.

LINK | Comments (0)

Air Titanic
: The chairman and vice-chairman of Air America leave, following the CEO and programming head last week and there are reports they can't make their payroll.
This is looking as well-planned as the rebuilding of Iraq.

LINK | Comments (8)

Ombadsman

: Tom Mangan has a reverse-psychology marketing idea for newspapers: Hire a blogger to snark about your paper every day and get it talked about.

LINK | Comments (2)

Citizens' media from Iraq

Zeyad has written some wonderful posts lately.

In one, he gives us his memories of visiting friends in Abu Ghraib prison and then eloquently and calmy explains how U.S. abuses there are, sadly, not a surprise and how it damages the effort to rebuild his nation:

They may be just a few soldiers, it may be an isolated case, but what's the difference? The effect has been done, and the Hearts and Minds campaign is a joke that isn't funny any more.

In a later post, he tells us about life in Basrah with a matter-of-factness that makes bombs just part of everyday life:

Not much has been going on in Basrah lately. Traffic and movement has returned to 'normal', a few streets where IP stations are located are still blocked. Explosives were found near a primary school which caused some panic among concerned Basrawis, another small bomb was dismantled close to a primary health care clinic which caused me to panic since I work at one. Basrah IP said the bombs were amateurish and wouldn't cause much damage anyway, so I'm a bit relieved!

There are signs, graffiti, and banners all over town against returning former Ba'athists to governmental institutions. Other signs strongly condemned the appointment of General Jassim Mohammed over the Fallujah brigade. One sign reads "Basrah residents demand a trial for Saddam's new cowboy in Fallujah". Another said "The return of Ba'athists is a return of Nazism and mass graves." ...

Electricity hasn't been very good this week at Basrah, but it still remains significantly better than Baghdad. The old medical aide was cursing his luck yesterday morning at the clinic. He had purchased a new air conditioner and a refrigerator but still did not have a chance to enjoy them because of the unstable electricity. He turned to me with a wicked toothless grin "Ah Dr., but there is an area just about 100 meters from where I live, and it has an alternate power schedule. I'm going to draw a power line from it." ... I like the man, he often comes over to my room and chats about politics. What amuses me is his constant criticism of Iraqis. He says things like "There's no use in anything. Iraqis are all thieves and murderers.", or "Iraqis don't deserve democracy, they only deserve Saddam."

He was ranting like crazy this morning. Recently, there was a MMR (Measles, Mumps, Rubella) immunisation campaign. Primary health care clinic employees are divided into as much as 10 teams, they start making rounds at primary schools and villages, each clinic in it's surrounding area, immunising children under 12 years old. The campaign is funded by Save The Children and other humanitarian organisations. Each team member is paid 10 dollars a day for a two weeks period. It is their duty to ensure that every child in their area is immunised. The campaign ended two months ago and they still haven't been paid, although the funds were paid in advance to the Basrah Health Directorate. Someone told them lately thay they will be only be paid 5 dollars a day, instead of 10. Corruption at the higher levels is still at large it seems....

This is a sense of life in Iraq we get from no reporter.

: River reacts to Abu Ghraib just as expected, with rage:

People are so angry. There’s no way to explain the reactions- even pro-occupation Iraqis find themselves silenced by this latest horror. I can’t explain how people feel- or even how I personally feel. Somehow, pictures of dead Iraqis are easier to bear than this grotesque show of American military technique. People would rather be dead than sexually abused and degraded by the animals running Abu Ghraib prison.

: In America, I hear people say that if we're expected to apologize for humiliating Iraqi prisoners then Iraqis should apologize for burning our citizens and hanging them from a bridge. Faiza (mother of Raed, Salam Pax's pal) takes that on from another side of the prism, quoting someone she knows saying that, well, the men killed in Falluja were mercenaries and they were torturing Iraqis in prisons.

I told her how amazed I
was and that I refuse such acts of killing and burning people in the
streets. She said: Don't be amazed Um-Raed, they were involved in torturing
and mistreating Iraqis in prisons.
I said: what prisons?

: Alaa reacts to the Abu Ghraib scandal differently:

This latest fiasco smells to me. It smells really bad. Abuses there seems to have been, but who took the photos, and the timing, isn't it too convenient? But you must know this: All this has not shaken my support for the liberation one little bit, nor my absolute conviction of the justice and nobility of the "Project". If some of you have seen fit to appologize to us about the behaviour of some of your "scum"; we must also appologize to you for the behaviour of so many of our "scum".

: Ironic Omar gives us the sense of the Arab street:

:: Some of the readers asked about my opinion about the interviews that GWB gave to Al-Hurra and Al-Arabeya TV channels and since I'm a CIA agent (I'm thinking of leaving them to work for the Mossad. I've heard they pay better), I guess my opinion would be biased, so I decided to offer you some of the responses I saw on the BBC Arabic which offers a comment section for Arab readers to post their opinions about the hot topics. There were about 30 comments today, since it's still fresh on the site. As usual, the comments from Iraqis-in general-contradicted those from other Arab countries, especially Palestine, Syria and Saudi Arabia. I also found that many of the commentators considered President Bush's speech an apology despite the fact that he didn't frankly apologize.
I've selected some of the comments for translation and it's worth mentioning that about 40% of the total number of comments was positive (sorry, I mean they were supportive of the CIA propaganda)....
-"Thank you Sir for apologizing on the abuse of the Iraqi prisoners in Abu Ghraib prison. Here you opened an important file; I think that those criminals who were responsible for the mass graves in my country (who are now in your jails' cells) should apologize for their massacres against the Iraqi people".
Imad Al-Sa'ad - Netherlands.
-"Who reads the reactions of Iraqis will see how surprised they're by the way the Americans can prove that years of Saddam's rule and of his anti-American propaganda can be washed out by time; here we have the president of the greatest nation on earth apologizes for what a small group of pervert soldiers did. And here, the American press proves that it's free to show the truth. We lived with similar pictures for years until they became the basics of every prison's daily life and we never heard an Arabic paper point them out. These are lessons from the western culture entering the hearts of Arabs, whether the Arab leaders liked or not".
Sa'eed - Diwaniyah/Iraq....
-"I'm very happy to see Iraqis condemning the abuse and defending the rights of the prisoners and this is the first time they do something like this, which was impossible for them to do under the dictator's regime. I think that our Arab brothers should mind their own business and take a look at their own prisons".
N - Jordan....

Read the rest.

: Ihath looks at the episode with more Iraqi irony, taking off on the picture of a female soldier pointing to the no-longer privates of an Iraqi prisoner:

Did you see how excited that American chick got over seeing an Iraqi man in the nude? You would think she never saw a naked man before. But I have to remind myself that this woman grew up in America and not in the middle east. In the middle east “no sex before marriage” is big. Unmarried women learn to live with, ehm! certain frustrations. But I mean this woman grew up in a country where a woman can change partners every two weeks, pornography is available on every street corner and willing men are a dime a dozen. Makes you suspect that men in America must be deficient in certain areas.

: Firas tells us what Iraqis need: schools!

: Zeyad also points us to another new Iraqi blog from an Iraqi-American who lives in the U.S. but has visited Iraq recently. I'm planning to have coffee with him when I'm in his neighborhood in a few weeks.

: By the way, notice the growing number of Arab blogs (in English) in Zeyad's blogroll.

LINK | Comments (5)

More Iraqi media

: Just came upon this very good story about an American company, Harris, hired to rebuild Iraqi media (via Zeyad, who send us to the weblog of a woman, an Iraqi expat, who works for Harris in Iraq).

LINK | Comments (5)

Michael Moore 411

: I didn't post about the controversy regarding Disney's supposed sudden refusal to distribute Michael Moore's anti-Bush movie because something just didn't smell right about it. Well, I have a good nose for non-news:

Less than 24 hours after accusing the Walt Disney Company of pulling the plug on his latest documentary in a blatant attempt at political censorship, the rabble-rousing film-maker Michael Moore has admitted he knew a year ago that Disney had no intention of distributing it.
The admission, during an interview with CNN, undermined Moore's claim that Disney was trying to sabotage the US release of Fahrenheit 911 just days before its world premiere at the Cannes film festival.
Instead, it lent credence to a growing suspicion that Moore was manufacturing a controversy to help publicise the film, a full-bore attack on the Bush administration and its handling of national security since the attacks of 11 September 2001.
In an indignant letter to his supporters, Moore said he had learnt only on Monday that Disney had put the kibosh on distributing the film, which has been financed by the semi-independent Disney subsidiary Miramax....
But Moore's publicity stunt, if that is what is, appears to be working. A front-page news piece in The New York Times was followed yesterday by an editorial denouncing Disney for censorship and denial of Moore's right to free expression.

I'm no fan of Disney (as a stockholder) but even they aren't stupid enough to act like Clear Channel. When this story came out, the implication was that Disney was blocking anyone from distributing the film. Disney made it clear that Moore was free to find distribution -- and he will. Movie studios pass on distributing films every day; it's the way the business works.

What amazes me most about Moore is that he has no respect for his own credibility.

LINK | Comments (18)