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Thoughts on culture, politics, music and stuff by Eric Olsen, Marty Thau and Mike Crooker, who are among other things, producers.
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Saturday, April 20, 2002
The Return of Mike Below Mike makes some excellent points in response to our discussion of the Middle East. I do not believe that Israel is perfect, and it is not beyond criticism or reproach. Palestinians are people too and deserve to be treated as such. I think those who support Israel are particularly sensitive right now because so much of the hyperbole being leveled against it is of the kind that denies its humanity or legitimacy. I'm glad that you do not. Thanks.
I thought you made a pretty good rebuttal to my points and I'll have to concede some of yours. One last item about the Jenin journalism: I wasn't saying it wasn't propaganda, I was saying that our demands for context are sometimes pretty selective, and mostly self-serving. If we think our actions can be rationalized by explaining recent history, we'll do that; if we think our actions need no justification we'll tend to ignore or deny contextual arguments. I'm not saying that each side is equally at fault, in my eyes it isn't 50/50 but it isn't all one way either. If you could quantify it, I'd say it's probably 75/25 or so, with the bulk of 'blame' being on the Palestinian side. I do think Israel has the right to protect itself but I bridle when I hear euphemisms used to 'spin' Western opinion. An example is 'accidental' civillian deaths. I agree that IDF soldiers are not targeting civillians (although some of these curfew shootings make you wonder) but if you use human shields or if you're bulldozing houses in a warren of a refugee camp, these deaths are NOT accidental--I'm sure the IDF knows approximately how many civillian casualties will occur and then decides to go forward or to wait, but they no in advance that civillians will be killed. Again, I'm not saying they have to conduct operations with zero civillian casualties, but give us the truth--the operation proceeded as planned, civillians were killed while operation took place, we regret the loss of life. Another point you offered was that the int'l aid groups were kept out because of ordnance and booby traps, but what was the Israeli plan? Were they just hoping that no one was going to return to Jenin? Who did they expect WAS going to eventually clean up the mess? If there are unexploded bombs in the rubble, wouldn't it make sense for the IDF to search the rubble? Where they could defuse the bombs? Hey, I can understand that the IDF has no desire to go back in there, the Palestinians made the mess, but why keep out aid workers for 6 days and then let them in--did they think the bombs were going to expire? I just don't understand the reasoning there. You either offer help and go in, or you pull back and let others in who are offering humanitarian assistance. Of course you're right that an Israel that is democratic is an obvious Western ally and worth defending, but my point is that we have to be careful about WHY were supporting that democracy. If Israel has a democratic vote and the majority decide to shoot all Palestinians--we obviously don't continue to support them. Likewise if Syria and Jordan suddenly decide to pressure HAMAS and Islamic Jihad to stop the bombings, well we want to support that, even if they aren't democracies. My point is we have to be careful not to lose site of the ACTIONS we support and don't get so hung up on the flavour of the politicians. Anyway, very interesting discussion, thanks. Mike Dea Vancouver Non-Clash of Civilizations While I thrash about in the dark trying to come to elementary terms with the problems of the Middle East, and world conflict between religions/civilizations in general, there are bloggers with a much keener grasp of the situation than I. Check out this extraordinary exchange between Muslimpundit Adil Farooq and Joe Katzman of Winds of Change, proving that deep-thinking men of good will can always find common ground. Gives you hope for the future. Between the Two, I’ll Take Art Speaking of delusional paranoids who should be ignored, Cynthia McKinney's constituents deserve exactly the manipulative, freakish embarrassment they keep electing every two years. The Night Is Filled With the Yapping of Loons This story is a sympathetic take on Art Bell, the late-night syndicated radio talk show host who specializes in "unexplained phenomena," shall we say. The article praises Bell for his nonjudgmental approach to his many deranged callers. This is in fact what I dislike most about Bell: there are truly unexplained phenomena that deserve critical review, but he approaches the plausible in the exact same way he approaches the ravings of disturbed individuals who don’t need a sympathetic hearing on national radio, but who need psychiatric treatment. Bell’s humoring of the literally lunatic fringe for the sake of ratings is the same kind of exploitation I despise in “reality” shows. Neither is it appropriate for these people to be encouraged in their delusions. It's very sad. I don’t think Bell should be censored, just ignored. Response to Mike Mike wrote to express his disagreement with some of my positions regarding Israel and the Palestinians, the conflict in Jenin, and the NPR report on same from yesterday. I quote Mike:
perhaps your relatives inside. The “root causes” in this case are very relevant because the Israeli action was in response to terrorism, not terrorism itself. The Israeli action was no more terrorism than our incursion into Afghanistan, and was just as justified. As far as “no one wanting to hear it,” this report wasn’t for Palestinians, it was for Americans, who would have no reason whatsoever not to want to hear a balanced report. “Okay this destruction is sad and alarming, and if civilians were killed that is a terrible thing. But why were the Israelis there in the first place? Why did they knock down houses? If civilians were killed, how did this happen?” These are some of the questions a responsible reporter would have asked herself, and not just hammered at the resultant destruction without trying to put it into some kind of context for her - more or less neutral - American audience. The most appalling thing about the report was that the reporter SO OBVIOUSLY TOOK SIDES FORM THE VERY BEGINNING, using every possible rhetorical technique to paint the Israelis in the worst possible light (I think I just mixed my metaphors). Just to make sure, I went back and listened to the report again - which I encourage you all to do here (skip through the first 4 minutes, which is another report) - and rather than not being as bad as I first thought, if anything it’s worse. When the report was live yesterday it took a while to sink in how egregiously biased it was; when I hear it now it sounds like a parody: McCarthy’s orotund tones, her indignation at having to “sneak” into the camp, the elderly weeping Palestinians, the litany of allegations and condemnations, the great detail given in the case of the deaf man allegedly bulldozed to his death “while 50 of his neighbors screamed in protest.” The report is propaganda pure and simple, consciously rigged to generate sympathy for the Palestinians and opprobrium for the Israelis. I don’t want civilians killed. I do think the Palestinians deserve a home of their own. I don’t believe they are all terrorists, but I do believe they have brought on the Israeli retaliations on themselves and I haven’t heard one Palestinian, certainly none in any position of power, condemn suicide bombings as a strategy, as immoral, as illegitimate, as murder of innocent men, women, and children. Regarding your concerns as to the particulars of the conflict in Jenin, consider these reports. Rather than paraphrase, I will simply copy Charles Johnson's revealing post:
Of his group of 30 gunmen, only four escaped from the camp on Wednesday, after the Palestinian arsenal ran dry. Most of the others were shot dead.
Omar and other "engineers" made hundreds of explosive devices and carefully chose their locations. "We had more than 50 houses booby-trapped around the camp. We chose old and empty buildings and the houses of men who were wanted by Israel because we knew the soldiers would search for them," he said. "We cut off lengths of mains water pipes and packed them with explosives and nails. Then we placed them about four metres apart throughout the houses -- in cupboards, under sinks, in sofas." The fighters hoped to disable the Israeli army's tanks with much more powerful bombs placed inside rubbish bins on the street. More explosives were hidden inside the cars of Jenin's most wanted men. Connected by wires, the bombs were set off remotely, triggered by the current from a car battery.
"When the senior officers realised what had happened, they shouted through megaphones that they wanted an immediate cease-fire. We let them approach to retrieve the men and then opened fire. "Some of the soldiers were so shocked and frightened that they mistakenly ran towards us."
He saw one fighter who went down to the street with his hands in the air shot dead by snipers.
Finally, your point about democracy: it isn’t just that Israel is a democracy and that none of its Arab neighbors are - it’s what that fact reveals about their repective worldviews, priorities, values and senses of morality. We share these with Israel and largely don't with their neighbors: that’s why we should and do support Israel. A Very Speedy Reply to Marty's "Arabs and Jews"
On the other hand the Christian-Jewish argument HAS been going on for 2000 yrs. A great source of demographic charts and maps - but expensive - is Barnavi's "Historical Atlas of the Jewish People." Scheindlein's "Short History of the Jewish people" and Rejwan's "Israel's Place in the Middle East" both talk about Jewish activity in Palestine after the Romans destroyed Judea and named it that. Peters' "From Time Immemorial" also includes some of this background material, although she concentrates on the period preceding Israel's independence. Goitein seems to be THE historian everyone refers to who made sense of the primary sources. Judith Weiss Reply to "Weeping Palestinians on NPR" and "Ad Nauseum"
I ran across your site and started to read some of your latest posts and disagreed with some of your ideas. The Jenin situation: You were amazed that the journalist didn't contextualize her comments about israeli suffering as well as Palestinian. But after 9/11 wasn't there a huge outcry against any 'root causers' who tried to put the terrorist attacks 'in context'? After WTC there was justifiable outrage against the horror of the attacks, everyone was shocked and furious and demanded justice. These are the same feelings that go through palestinians in Jenin. Is it the whole story? No, there's context, there's a root cause, but no one wants to hear it after something traumatic like having your house destroyed with perhaps your relatives inside. Hey, I agree with you, suicide bombers are terrorists and have got to be stopped, but that doesn't mean every Palestinian is a terrorist. That doesn't even mean all Palestinians who are resisting occupation are terrorists. Why wouldn't they defend their city against the Israeli incursion? Why is that a terrorist act? I think it is morally justifiable for Palestinians to resist military occupation and forced illegal military eviction from their land. Is it justifiable to blow up Israeli citizens? NO. As for Israeli military action, you have to agree that they were provoked and their citizens are crying out for safety, but after the battle, why bulldoze the houses? And if you have to bulldoze the houses why keep aid out? When the battle is over why not let civillians at least claim the bodies of their loved ones. Allow aid agencies to look for possible survivors in the rubble, and if you've got all those bulldozers lying around why not help uncover the bodies in the rubble. Plus, is it Israeli military policy to use civillian shields? These small cruelties puzzle people like me who are leaning toward supporting Israel, but are just saddened by these actions. Israel obviously doesn't want to be seen as being forced to negotiate a Palestinian state by violence and terror, the only problem is that its been 35 years since '67 and it hasn't all been wars and violence, there have been times of peace where Israel could have been negotiating but chose not to. I think Israel only has two choices--invade and annex the whole of the West Bank and Gaza and give citizenship to the Palestinians or help Palestinians create a state of their own. But Israel has acted like they wanted the best of both options, the land for themselves but no statehood or citizenship for the Palestinians. The West Bank now is not unlike apartheid South Africa--little settlements of Jews living amongst the Palestinians, but being segregated by military checkpoint, and special road. When you look at this conflict you have to say, what is wrong with Palestinians? Why don't they want peace? I could totally back Israel in this fight if it wasn't for the settlements, it just seems that they are a deliberate provocation in the Palestinian faces, a constant reminder who has the military strength and the will to do what they want, to take land with no regard to compensation or property rights. Why would Israel do this if it wanted peace? Was it a chip to be bargained with and then returned? Or was it to create 'facts on the ground', an urgency to Palestinians to settle before all their land was gone? On the issue of Israel being a democracy, thats another thing that picks at me. Surely, Israel is a democracy for the benefit of its own citizens, democracy is a good in and of itself. It irritates me when I hear Israelis say that there cause should be supported because they are the only democracy in the region, as if that’s the reason that they chose to be democratic, so that they could claim to be on 'our team'. I'm in favor of an Israeli state. I'm glad it’s a democracy, I wish other regimes in the area were democratic, but if Syria, Jordan, and Egypt were democracies would that mean I should have less support for Israel? No, the reason I believe in the legitimacy of Israel is not a function of the non-democratic status of its neighbours. Mike Dea Vancouver ARABS & JEWS To this day Arab nations do not recognize the existence of a Jewish state. If and when that is ever acknowledged and Israeli security is guaranteed -- let's not forget that Israel is surrounded by 14 Arab nations with drawn scepters and needs to be assured of secure borders -- then, perhaps, Israel and Palestine might be able to coexist. From the Israeli perspective this is "their final solution" after so many false starts towards a peace accord. From the Palestinian perspective the Jews have "stolen" their land and should be totally driven out of Israel. Aside from the fact that it's impossible to determine if anyone "stole" any land, that will never happen and the sooner the Palestinians recognize that fact, the better off their future prospects will be. After WW2 and the Holocaust, the surviving Jews flocked to Israel from all over Europe and realized they must never allow themselves to be in the same passive position again. The Russians, after losing 20 million people in WW2, built up their defenses similarly. It's called learning from past experience and never making the same mistake twice. There will be no solution as long as Arafat and Sharon are in power. These two bickering warriors from past wars despise each other and are incapable of diplomatic response. They must relinquish their positions of control and the countries of the world must somehow step up and mediate a just settlement to this insanity. It doesn't seem likely the USA can do it alone. Much to the credit of the USA, they've certainly tried and deserve to be recognized for it instead of all this ridicule. Iran, Iraq and Syria must withdraw and stop fueling the fires of hatred. The Arab media machine must call a halt to their incendiary propaganda. The Israelis must withdraw from their settlements and rewrite the post 1967 borders. The issue of Jerusalem remains a sore point but perhaps it can be made into a Holy City, with access to all religious sites for all three religions ... and monitored by UN forces. This Jewish-Arab argument has been ongoing for 2,000 years. No matter what anyone says, it's a religious war. Enough with this "Jew bashing." Let's fight AIDS, food shortages in 3rd world countries, environmental problems ... and the like. There's certainly no shortage of world issues to confront. My last thought ... a good deal is when both sides are unhappy. There must be compromise. Does anyone have a better solution? Marty Thau Friday, April 19, 2002
Weeping Palestinians on NPR Just when I was starting to feel better about NPR - other than the Cato sponsorship issue, but that was more of a Cato problem - I heard this report this afternoon from Jenin by Julie McCarthy. In 8 minutes of breathy allegations, weeping Palestinians, words like “cruelty” “onslaught” “devastation” “indiscriminate” “bullet-riddled” were tossed about casually as McCarthy toured the camp after “sneaking in” with Palestinian help, of course. She quoted the UN clown Larsen, she quoted an Amnesty International lackey, she quoted a Palestinian negotiator: all of it, every little bit, from the Palestinian perspective other than a brief, nearly hysterical quote from a young Israeli lieutenant who denied that anyone was “plowed over with bulldozers.” She then related the tale of a disabled deaf man who was “plowed over with bulldozers” as his wordless shrieks died away. “How often do you beat your wife, young man?” She never said why the Israelis were there in the first place. She never mentioned Israeli civilian deaths from suicide bombers. She strongly sided with the Palestinian claims of “hundreds of civilian deaths” over the Israeli position of a “few dozen.” She ended the jeremiad with “the Israelis will have to answer to world opinion for allegations of wanton cruelty.” I was driving back from dropping my son off for his weekend stay at his mother’s, and I kept looking down at the radio in disbelief. It just kept going on and on and getting worse and worse. Whatever this woman’s predispositions, in a classic case of identification-with-subject, she was overwhelmed by the scene and lost any sense of dispassion or proportion. She became a Palestinian, joined in the outrage, totally lost it. Hear it for yourself. So much for balance. Ad Nauseum I guess it has to be said again and again: suicide bombers are terrorists, not freedom fighters; radical Islam is cynically using the Palestinians to get at Israel because Israel is full of Jews, strong Jews, and Israel stands in the way of their domination of the Middle East; the U.S. supports Israel not out of some misplaced sense of guilt or sorrow for the Holocaust (although we are deeply sorrowful or we are heartless pigs), nor because the “Jewish lobby is so powerful,” but because Israel IS THE ONLY MODERN DEMOCRACY IN THE ENTIRE CESSPOOL, I mean region. The fact is that we have to keep saying those things to a minority who mistrust Israel and/or Jews here in the U.S., and the much larger element in Europe who HATE ISRAEL AND THE JEWS. Are they insane? Blind? Egregiously misinformed? Amnesiacs? Are they really happier with a Jewry that turns the other cheek, as suggested by Melanie Phillips in the Spectator? Maybe the Europeans need to be reminded - again - that they killed 6 million Jews only 60 years ago or so. I guess that wasn’t enough. I guess the fact that some Jews escaped and had the raging balls to form their own country where they wouldn’t live in fear of being yanked from their beds in the middle of the night and gassed, shot, or experimented upon makes many Europeans indignant. Perhaps this - and the fact that all of their current neighbors wish them dead, eliminated, terminated, extinguished as a country and a people - might explain Israel’s preoccupation with security. Oh, also the fact that teenagers are blowing themselves up amongst them at parties, restaurants, malls, on buses, streets, and anywhere else they can squeeze like rats through cracks in a wall. Europe’s moral culpability is so great regarding the Jews that maybe the poor sensitive Europeans can’t take it. Blame the victim, especially when he refuses to be a victim anymore. I respect, admire, even love the Israelis, and if I had to choose, I’d take Israel over any European country in a fight (I’d really hate to give up the UK) because I know they will always be there for us as well. Empty Nest While this whole internecine blogger controversy is fresh on my mind, check out Jeff Jarvis’s comments re same:
That's life. The Internet belongs to the audience. It belongs to the people. There is no way to control it. There is no way to own it. Mind you, I love all the pioneers (except when Blogger is down; I was going to publish this last night!). They invented a whole new kind of commentary, reporting, publishing, storytelling. They did a great job. They're still doing a great job. They gave birth to a brilliant child. But now it's time for the child to grow up and move out of the house. Curse of Kitaen First there was the Curse of Rocky Colavito, now it’s the Curse of Kitaen. Ever since the fact that Chuck Finley has filed for divorce from the strung-out, bloated, limp-fleshed whorehound became public, the Indians have been beaten like redheaded stepchildren. What must we do to free ourselves of this curse? Voodoo? Potions? Get Robert Blake on the case? Treacher Feature Jim Treacher is one hilarious, twisted fellow. I referenced Nelly Furtado’s “I’m Like a Bird” yesterday in my attack on suicide bombing-celebrant Julio Pino, a professor at nearby Kent State. Thus inspired, Jim came up with new lyrics more appropriate to teenage girls blowing themselves up:
I'll only blast away-ee-ay I don't know where my head is I don't know where my heart is (And baby, all I need is to do is 'splode this) I'm like a bomb I'll only blast away-ee-ay I don't know where my leg is I don't know where my arm is Speaking of Lileks, I also agree with Treacher that his latest Bleat on the Gnat is touching and sublime, to an extra degree for me because I am also the father of a little girl and in my 40s. Being middle-aged and crusty, I appreciate the wonders of young life and love even more than I did when I had my first two in my 20s. Of course, I was a drunken reprobate then, working 70-hour weeks DJing around SoCal and living a demented version of the high life, which was “high” only to the extent that I was. Did work some wild parties, though, including a house just down the street from where Robert Blake lives. He was at the party - I have no problem believing he shot someone, the hostile little shit. Last word on Treacher for the moment, his latest blog takes out after Denton for his use of the word “hijacked” in his discussion of computer-bloggers vs. warbloggers. This was an unfortunate usage, though I’m guessing unintentional. As I was driving home from radio just now, I recalled a function I DJ’d at USC at which John Wayne (an alum) spoke. I’ll never forget the Duke’s words: “Either lead, follow, or get the fuck out of my nutsack,” or something to that effect. That’s how I feel about the blog book. Cubbyholes Being Erected More blogger book commentary from Reid Stott via Glenn Reynolds who also cautions against polarization - call it a fourth way.
And on the other side of the coin, there are indeed people who may not have been First Wavers like Jason but were veteran bloggers long before 9-11, who consider themselves generally left of center, yet fully support the war on terrorism. And don't care if they are published in a book or not. So build me my own cubbyhole. No label, please. All I have ever stumbled across speak of whatever is on their minds at whatever time - we're talking about degrees here, not absolutes. Even the most misty, starry-eyed sensualist, or the most hardened digitalist has made some sort of commentary on 9/11 and its labyrinthine postscript. Maybe this is about jockeying for position, maybe it's rope-a-dope, maybe Colin Powell will sweep in and cuff our ears, but in the meantime just participate in the process. Dung Hits Fan - Civilians Struck The "Warblog" book pot is further stirred by Nick Denton, who sees a divide between the original, computer-related bloggers, and the bloggy-come-latelies who have concentrated on politics, policy, and blowing things up. Nick has some good points to make for both sides, finding a Clintonian third way:
And then James Wolcott writes a piece in Business 2.0 that pretty much ignores weblogs before the warbloggers; and the warbloggers get together to write a book, tentatively called Blog Nation. Jason Kottke, veteran web kid, seems to feel weblogs have been hijacked, which they have. The warbloggers respond, politely: write your own damned book. The revolution is eating its children. On balance, I think Jason has a point, and at least he's making it; most of the SF web people are scared of argument. Sure, a book needs to have a voice. But, get real, “Blog Nation” is not a monolithic work, it's a *compilation*. Compilations are meant to be diverse; at least in so far as that makes them interesting. So, warblogger buddies, just make nice with Kottke; apart from anything else, he's actually an excellent writer. I restate again, here, now, that our intention is to put out the best-written and most thought-provoking book we can. That’s all. There is no political agenda beyond HATING TERRORISM in its many forms. This is not a “warblogger” vs. “whateverthehellblogger” situation; this is not Bay Area vs. Everywhere Else; this is a book to represent the contributions of bloggers everywhere to the minds, hearts and souls of mankind in reaction to a stunning tragedy. Two of my most fervent nominations - if I can only pick two, I pick these two - are about as far from “warblogging” as possible: Tony Pierce’s riveting, brilliant, funny, wrenching photo essay "Dear Kids From Afghanistan," and David Rees’s scathing, scabrous, hysterical, vicious satire "Get Your War On" (part 6 is my favorite). That’s about as far from “eradicate the assholes and the camels they rode in on, NOW,” and dissertations on ballistics as you can get. Now I have question: Where did Nick get the “Blog Nation” title? I haven’t seen or heard a title discussed anywhere and I am confused. Not that it’s a bad title, but Nick, who I also have not heard from, seems to know something I don’t. Keep those cards and letters coming. Thursday, April 18, 2002
Oh, Okay, Now We'll Stop Now that SCIENTISTS have called for a halt to the $5 billion worldwide child prostitution industry, that should about take care of it. Baby-raping pimps throughout the globe responded to the news: "We don't want to mess with no SCIENTISTS, they might use death rays on our asses or something. We'll send the little kiddies back to their moms and dads and stop sticking crusty, rusted needles into their emaciated little arms to keep them hooked and at our mercy. They aren't virgins anymore anyway," said pimp spokesman M.F. Assplow. One less thing to worry about. Allergies vs. Viscera-Sucking Worms Wherein it is alleged that the reason Third World urchins suffer fewer allergies than Western tykes is due to the
Those parasites may be doing something to the body's immune system to help prime it, and understanding that may be the key to dealing effectively with allergies... Skanks On Parade According to Reuters
A California state appeals court has ruled it is not libel to call someone a "skank" or even a "big skank" on the radio -- describing the word as "a derogatory slang term of recent vintage that has no generally recognized meaning." The state's 1st Court of Appeals, ruling in a case stemming from the show "Who Wants to Marry a Multimillionaire," found that participants in the program "voluntarily subjected themselves to inevitable scrutiny and potential ridicule by the public and the media." "It Would Have Been Better to Be Dead and Buried" I have been going on and on about the destructive mentality and worldview that allows suicide bombing to be viewed as an acceptable military strategy among certain elements in the Middle East. The worship of death, the doomed romanticism that lives for the past, that refuses the future, that denies the sacredness of life in this world all contribute to the misery and squalor of those who partake of these ideals. So I’m reading this about the devastation of Jenin and feeling kind of bad about the destruction of people’s homes, and yet more death - regardless of the disputed numbers - and even feeling somewhat sympathetic to the sorrow being expressed by the Norwegian (I’ve always been proud of being Norwegian-American, now I’m not so sure) UN representative Terje Larsen, until I get to, first this:
"It would have been better to have stayed inside," said his brother Zaki, 36. "It would have been better to be dead and buried." But not for Zaki, who worships death and sees it as preferable to continued misery here on earth. Not, “Whew, we just barely escaped. It’s good to be alive,” but “Shit, the way things are, we’d be better off dead and humping virgins and eating grape bon bons or whatever.” This man feels no sense of investment in his life; he sees life as a liability, not an adventure and magical opportunity to be cherished. I imagine that he, like bin Laden and others believe that “Americans and Jews value life too much.” No, just enough. Maybe Now We Can Move On to a Real Energy Policy The president’s blogrolling with the oil industry is one of the things I like least about him.
During two days of sometimes emotional debate, drilling supporters assailed "radical" environmentalists who have opposed drilling and talked as much about the recent turmoil in the Middle East and Iraq's suspension of oil shipments as about the refuge itself. "There's an inferno in the Mideast and we're importing more than 50 percent of our oil," said Murkowski, arguing that extracting the oil in ANWR is a matter of national security because it will cut the need for imports. Drilling opponents scoffed at that argument. Be Nice to Our Northern Neighbors I am absolutely opposed to blowing up Canadians. They are nice people and also very sensitive. If we are not more careful, someone will write a STRONGLY WORDED LETTER. Seriously, this awful mishap should re-verify the fact that there is no way to preclude human error in war any more than any other human endeavor. We have caused civilian casualties, and have killed our own and our near-own accidentally. This sucks and the military should put top priority into precluding it, but at least we are sorry when we do it. We don't kill civilians intentionally, or as a matter of strategy, nor do we hide our combatants among civilians. But still, lay off the Canadians. Humbled By Doc I ran with the Cato/NPR story because I thought it was hilarious. I should have known that someone like Blogfather Doc Searls would have the knowledge and insight to turn it into something much deeper and more important:
And yet they waste their time, and enormous amounts of market karma, flattening real community radio — a potential distribution channel — all over the place. They did it when they got the FCC to kill off the sub-100-watt Class D license a couple decades ago; and they did it again when they joined with their paranoid commercial brethren to do the same to low power FM a couple years ago. Pino Not Even Intelligent? The letters are coming in strong today. An anonymous individual from Minneapolis sends in this query regarding the Kent State flap:
He has demonstrated a good deal of “deep stupidity” as well as a lack of “wisdom,” yet he still may well be “book smart,” which is one measure of “intelligence.” I myself can be deeply stupid (I tried to run over a particularly offensive neighbor - that was stupid), and quite unwise (how about 2 DUI’s in 16 months in SoCal in the late ’80s? not much wisdom there), while I am “book smart” to some degree. I have a high IQ, whatever that indicates (I think it indicates an ability to take IQ tests rather well). Regardless, I am guilty as charged of assumption. I sit here braying. (PS - I just realized I called John Simmons "intelligent" in the last entry - I still think he is, though.) A Libertarian Responds Among the super perks of doing the blog is hearing from intelligent, interesting people with all different points of view. John Simmons, of the mighty fine Paxety Pages (“From the Remote Wilds of Lower Blogovia”) from down in Fla (I bet we’re hotter than you are today; oh crap, he’s got a thermometer on the site, they’re at 84, we only got to 83), send this response to our Cato/NPR story:
But - as a person with a long background in broadcast news, I know there is another way "contributions" are made to NPR - special interest groups "buy" stories. When you hear an NPR announcer say a certain story was funded by a contribution from XYZ, that means that XYZ gave NPR a grant to report on that issue. NPR claims organizations giving grants have no editorial input into the story, but the organization could certainly guide the reporting through creative grant requirements. So, perhaps to get our libertarian ideas before more people, it is good for Cato to "buy" its way onto NPR. If that's what Cato is doing rather than just making a general contribution. Campaign From Prison? Here is a discussion of the options of convicted felon-congressman Jim Traficant, miscreant from Youngstown. Conversion Intoxication This flap at Kent State regarding an Islamic professor’s editorial in defense of suicide bombing - that Glenn Reynolds, of course, highlighted this morning - has me all stirred up: on its merits alone, and for the fact that I live less than ten miles from Kent, have taken classes at the school, and have done commentaries for WKSU, located on the campus. First, let’s look at the farewell ode that associate history professor Julio Cesar Pino wrote to a suicide bomber in a guest editorial in the Daily Kent Stater earlier this week:
Bismillah, r-Rahman, r-Rahim As-salamu-'alykum-wa-rahmatullaahi-wa-barakatuh! In the name of Allah, the most Compassionate, the most Merciful, peace and blessings of Allah be upon you. Dear beloved Sister and Martyr: Freedom bird, freedom bird! How happy you must feel in the midst of millions of Muslims who have sacrificed themselves for over 14 centuries so that Islam might live. Arabs and Kurds, Chinese and Malays, Indians and Africans walk the same ground alongside you in Jennah (paradise). You, Ayat, are a shining star of the greatest generation raised for humanity since the days of the Companions of the Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him). I write "you are" because the Koran teaches that those who die in the cause of Allah (all praise is for him) "are not dead but alive, though ye see them not." Why did you choose martyrdom, Ayat? That is what most Americans wish to know. The latest issue of Newsweek magazine has a picture of you on the cover, calling you "the human bomb." The author of the story, Christopher Dickey, wonders why an 18-year-old girl wanted to commit "suicide" rather than finish high school and marry her boyfriend. He says you are a "terrorist" and that the majority of Palestinians condoned your action, making them "terrorist" cheerleaders. Forgive Americans for thinking that Palestine is at peace and you, a demonically possessed creature, genetically programmed to kill by Arab DNA, are the one making war.
Other than the basic notion that the Palestinians deserve a home of their own OF SOME FORM, there is no moral imperative as to which particular land is whose. So the rhetorical cry of the self-extinguished bird: “This is not your land and we are a people” is both meaningless and redundant. The Palestinians are a people - who is saying they aren’t? - but the cry of “this is not your land” is a purely political statement, not a moral statement, and political claims must be resolved politically - through negotiation - not by self-destructive, murderous blackmail. “This is not your land - I blow myself up,” is the ultimate temper tantrum, the ultimate in childish acting out. “If I can’t have my way, I’ll kill myself, and I’ll kill you in the process.” This sounds like Columbine. Perhaps a teenager IS the best symbol for such an adolescent philosophy. At least teenagers ARE adolescent - I don’t have a clue what Yasser Arafat’s excuse is, or that of a college professor who is supposed to instruct young people, not publicly try to out-adolescent them.
A particular appeal of Islam seems to be its poofy romanticism, its call to step outside of apparent reality and rearrange appearances into a radically new hierarchy. “This is really great! According to the material, secularized, INFIDEL world, I haven’t done much, am kind of a loser, but according to my NEW WAY OF THINKING all of the “false, Western” values that make me look like a chump, are ALL WRONG: down is up, wrong is right, suicidal murder is “martyrdom” and pleasing to Allah. Of course this is an extreme position and most Muslims don’t go to these extremes, but recent converts (along with the “humiliated” middle and upper-middle classes, and the truly oppressed) are among those most likely to buy into the self-serving “beautiful loser” romantic appeal of the whole thing. That’s how a presumably intelligent adult American man can sound like such a blithering idiot. The idiot concludes:
O, Allah, protect the soldiers of Islam fighting in Palestine. Accept the martyr into paradise. Heal the wounded, succor the sick, free the captive, grant shelter to the refugee, comfort the widow and orphan. Let us take the pain of Ayat al-Akras and the hundreds like her into our hearts, so that the suffering awakens us to the terror done in our name and with our implicit silence, and moves us to action. May Allah elevate your place in paradise, Assad Jibril Pino And the cynical, power-grasping leadership of much of the Islamic world - from Egypt to Saudi Arabia to secular Iraq to the Palestinian Authority - pray upon this all-or-nothing, us-vs.-them, Jews-drink-blood, Americans-give-them-the tools-to-do-it, outrageous horseshit that would be laughable if its consequences weren’t so dire. I think the ridiculous absurdity of the extreme Islamist view is the buffer zone that allowed us to essentially shrug off the Islamist threat prior to September 11. But ignorant, desperate, oppressed people are often immune to the call of logic, as are many recent converts. I agree with Glenn that this man shouldn’t be fired for expressing his deluded point of view, but his romantic, childish, illogical effusion should be ruthlessly skewered for the dangerous, immoral fantasy that it is, and all clear-thinking people should point and stare at an intelligent man who has betrayed his own mind, his family, and his country. The Rock Invents Writing! See this interesting story from the NY Times which asserts that evidence has been found indicating the Scorpion King may have been a historical figure, and that a 5,250-year-old tableau found in Egypt detailing his exploits may be the earliest form of writing yet found. And you thought he was just a wrestler trying to become an actor. Wednesday, April 17, 2002
Give Me Public Radio Or Give Me Death My nose for hypocrisy, or at least screaming irony, was sharpened by the Tim Noah/William Bennett discussion of earlier today. So there I was, driving along to pick up the 2-year-old from pre-school, listening to "All Things Considered" on NPR, thinking distant thoughts of Hawaii and other vague pleasantries, when the familiar, nasal, NPR announcer intoned, “Today’s program brought to you with the help of the Cato Institute.” The Cato Institute, as in libertarian think tank, as in “25 years of advancing liberty.” Perhaps the Cato Institute is unaware that NPR is a nonprofit institution with FUNDING FROM THE GOVERNMENT (though NPR claims to receive only 2% of its funding directly from the government, it’s the thought that counts), and that NPR notoriously leans to the left. This is like hearing that "Israel Radio International is brought to you with the help of the Palestinian National Authority.” This is Cato’s mission:
The market-liberal vision brings the wisdom of the American Founders to bear on the problems of today. As did the Founders, it looks to the future with optimism and excitement, eager to discover what great things women and men will do in the coming century. Market liberals appreciate the complexity of a great society, they recognize that socialism and government planning are just too clumsy for the modern world. It is--or used to be--the conventional wisdom that a more complex society needs more government, but the truth is just the opposite. The simpler the society, the less damage government planning does. Planning is cumbersome in an agricultural society, costly in an industrial economy, and impossible in the information age. Today collectivism and planning are outmoded and backward, a drag on social progress.
Instead, the CPB lives on, albeit with slightly less money in the bank, its day of reckoning postponed until 1999. Part of the credit for that turnaround must go to America's public radio and television stations, which mobilized thousands of listeners and viewers to protest the proposed changes. After all, argued the subsidized stations, if PBS and NPR are not there to bring audiences alternative programming, who will?
The original community stations were free of federal subsidy, getting by on a shoestring and a loyal base of local volunteers and donors. Since the 1970s several of those stations have chosen to pursue CPB funds as well. But that money has come with strings attached. Though federal funds have undeniably assisted many stations, they have also encouraged many broadcasters to forget their traditional mission. The CPB has fostered a new professional class within the community radio movement, a group that has accumulated power at volunteers' expense and promoted more streamlined, predictable programming. And while most community broadcasters continue to be grateful for any support their small stations can acquire, others are beginning to wonder if it is worth the price. There are many good reasons to defund the CPB. It seems wrong to force any taxpayer to fund speech she disapproves of, be it NPR or the Voice of America. And it is not fair to force low-income taxpayers to underwrite news and entertainment for NPR's generally affluent audience. But there is another problem, less often noted: federal funds inevitably eradicate local diversity and character. Just to make our libertarian policy crystal clear, please consider this report from early ‘95:
...."Stop subsidizing the tastes of the upper middle class--NEA, NEH, Corporation for Public Broadcasting," agreed William Niskanen, chairman of the libertarian Cato Institute. Niskanen also proposed eliminating tax exemptions for nonprofit organizations, which benefit conservative groups "by some amounts" but "benefit the Left by massive amounts." "Frankly, I think Americans ought to have more of their money under their total control and we should eliminate all these special privileges," he explained, pledging that Cato is "willing to trade in our exemption in a tradeoff for lower rates for all Americans." NEWS FLASH - Women are Bitches That's right I said it. I am a female and sometimes I am a complete bitch. I am not proud nor boastful, merely honest. Apparently there is a new understanding of this phenomena and how it applies to pre-adolescent girls. According to this article and corresponding study, young girls between the ages of 10-13 (but sometimes up to age 100) are prone to a certain type of bullying that's not as violent as hallway brawls or after school fist fights, but no less insidious. I can speak from firsthand experience on this matter. Girls can be really mean. Think Stephen King's Carrie. Poor Carrie White, already plagued with a psychotic, religious freak mother, is then tortured and ostracized by the girls at school. For what? Being different, being naive, being creepy? Okay, being creepy is a good reason. Girls can be disturbingly cruel to one another, pushing the most sensitive buttons. I know for a fact that I didn't leave my house the entire summer of '81 for fear that a certain girl, initials J.L. (I am still a little afraid of her) would kick my ass. The not-so-veiled threat of physical violence foisted upon me on the last day of school ruined my entire summer. It's almost shocking that my mother didn't notice that her prepubescent daughter wanted to spend every waking moment with her and had developed an aversion to public places. I clearly recall dreading the first day of school that fall. Seventh grade orientation: all students gathered to hear the principal espousing the virtues of being in junior high-land. I am not listening - my eyes are darting over the entire cafeteria looking for this too-developed 12-year-old nemesis. Suddenly I spot her. Eyes fixed, heart racing, butterflies fluttering, we make eye contact. For a brief millisecond J.L. flashes a glare, then a warm smile. I instinctively smile back, the way one might react when faced with a snarling pit bull as it lunges to lick you and sniff your crotch. Relieved and relaxed I realize she has forgiven all grievances and we are now friends. I am embarrassed of my harsh judgment and ashamed for wasting my entire summer in fear of this highly evolved and benevolent girl. As we were ushered out of the cafeteria to begin our glorious junior high years, I approached my new friend and then it hit me, I had grown five inches over the summer and now towered imposingly over the heavy-chested shrimp. She wasn't my friend, she just had good depth perception and realized I could now beat her ass to a pulp. That was a turning point for me. I would be bullied again by various antagonists: some of them I faced and challenged, some I cringed in fear of, but I was now wiser. I had a better perspective. Being afraid is a waste of time. Not much has changed with the adult women I deal with, although I will say that the shorter the female, the nastier they are. Randy Newman was right. I hope as my daughter grows up I can help her avoid the pitfalls of these treacherous relationships. So far she seems to be more of a bully-er than a bully-ee. I like neither. Dawn Olsen The Francis Fukuyama of Cyberspace Tim Noah - who appears to be gunning for the title of the "Francis Fukuyama of cyberspace”: as wrong as possible on as many fronts as possible - does two things with this "Chatterbox" column. (Before we go on, who would name his column “Chatterbox” anyway? What kind of self-image does this imply? “I just chatter away all the livelong day: chatter, chatter, chatter. I’m like a box full of chatter. Tee hee. I am silly. I don’t care who knows it. I am Chatterbox.” If I ever get a column with Slate, I think I’ll call it “Dumbshit.”) First, Noah denies that the West’s ability to self-criticize is an asset, then he reaffirms his earlier denial that Western civilization is indeed superior to Islamic civilization because, while we would use the measurements of (his words) “democracy, economic prosperity, religious toleration, respect for human rights, and equality of the sexes,”... “Many Muslims would consider a better yardstick to be piety, an ability to preserve ancient traditions, and strict obedience to Allah.” Now, he makes it clear that these aren’t HIS priorities, but they are Islamic priorities and are therefore germane to the discussion. I don’t think you can have it both ways: you either pick one set of values or the other. You can’t say “these are my values and by these values the West is clearly superior,” and then turn around and say “however, by another set of values, another civilization is superior so there is no such thing as actually “’superior.’” This is of course the whole postmodern dilemma of relativism in a nutshell, but regardless of our “scientific” inability to set absolute values for the universe, we are able to choose values for ourselves, here on earth; and if you choose the values of “democracy, economic prosperity, religious toleration, respect for human rights, and equality of the sexes” as your yardstick, then you HAVE MADE A DECISION, and unless you are autistic (no offense), by such a yardstick the WEST IS SUPERIOR. You do have the option of saying something like “all values are relative and therefore you can’t compare cultures that have different values,” but A) Noah doesn’t do this in a forthright manner, and B) even though the universe is theoretically value-neutral, we are still free to SELECT VALUES OF OUR OWN, just as we are free not to try to walk through trees even though theoretically the wood is no more solid than air. Having selected values, we must then apply them consistently. Noah then accuses William Bennett (no friend of mine, a self-important pontificating windbag) of CIRCULAR REASONING because while Bennett says that the ability to self-criticize is instrumental to the West’s superiority, he then brooks no actual criticism of the West. I agree with Bennett’s first point without reservation, but disagree with the second: obviously we in the “West” (hardly a monolith - look at the US-Euro split over the Middle East, for example) deserve criticism on many fronts (for example, we suck at men’s field hockey), but the openness and egalitarianism that allows for self-criticism IS central to our ability to improve, to refine, to replace outmoded theories with new, better ones. This process is similar to, if not identical to the scientific method and explains our superiority in that critical area as well. If you can’t tell the emperor that he has no clothes without fear of having your head amputated as he flaps his wiener obliviously in the breeze, then you probably won’t decode the human genome, develop advanced weapons, or be within a country mile of the technological cutting edge that leads to improved economic productivity, or even basic health care. The fact that we can and do criticize ourselves in an ongoing, eternal, internal audit without taking it too personally and killing or jailing each other in the process, is much more important than any specific criticism. I don’t care if Bennett is so deluded as to think we are perfect - we are not - but this doesn’t make him wrong for singing the West’s praises for its ability to criticize itself. Noah then excoriates Bennett on a personal level for writing a book called Why We Fight when he, Bennett, appears to have actively avoided service in Vietnam as a young man. While this may make Bennett a hypocrite (what moralists aren’t?), it STILL doesn’t make him wrong about the West’s ability to criticize itself. You could call him a big fat infected turd and he would STILL be right about the West and self-criticism. No matter how you may insult, or even kill, the messenger, his message may still be correct, and in this case it is. Tim Noah: still wrong, and still chattering. Assaults, Cyber and Otherwise As if exploding Palestinians, near-universal international condemnation, and intense military conflict weren’t enough, Israel is also being assaulted digitally.
As violence escalates in the region, cyber attacks on Israel are also on the rise. In the past 14 days, Israel has suffered about two-thirds of the significant web defacements in the Middle East.
...It is possible for the political hackers to intensify their campaign, said Peter Sommer, senior fellow at the Computer Security Research Centre at the London School of Economics. "It is entirely feasible to mount an attack on critical national infrastructure," he said. "From a pro-Arab point of view it would be far more effective than sending in a suicide bomber." Interesting also, and very encouraging, is the sympathetic coverage of Israel by the BBC, normally a bastion of Palestinian leanings. (Thanks to Marty for the heads up) Disconnect This how dependent I’ve become upon the Internet: I get in this morning - after dropping off my son at school, weird to see everyone in shorts in mid-April but it’s 80 degrees already! - just before 8 as I always do on weekdays, fire up the computer while I take a quick look at the papers, snag a Diet Coke (just for the fun, the bubbles and the caffeine of it). With the computer up and running I hit my CompuServe icon, hit “connect” to get my email (still on an old version of CompuServe so I can keep my email address: a nice and tidy ericolsen@compuserve.com - no stupid numbers, qualifiers, mitigators, or phonetic variations like some wretched personalized license plate; I really hate personalized license plates, “Oh, look at me, I’m driving my car - not your car, but my car, and you know it is my car because it has my name on it. Okay, not really my name, but if you squint your eyes, and read it quickly out loud, ‘CSMEHTH’ spells ‘Smith’ - cool!”). Only I don’t get my email, I get an error message: "(568) DNS Error: unable to resolve gateway.compuserve.com" Shuddering with foreboding, I quickly hit the Internet Explorer icon which should take me almost instantaneously - I have a cable modem - to my homepage, but this doesn’t happen either. I get the dreaded blue “i,” and “The page cannot be displayed” warning, as dissatisfying as flat Diet Coke, warm flat decaffeinated Diet Coke. I now know from experience that the system is down. I am already irritated because Chuck Finley gave up 9, yes I said “9,” runs in a single inning last night, condemning the Indians’ winning streak to a premature halt at 10. I curse the harpy Tawny Kitaen for the emotional and physical damage she has inflicted upon Chuck, who has filed for divorce after being pummeled piston-like with the spike heels of the faded “actress/model.” Chuck has also had to care for their distraught children while Mommy was in the slammer for said attack, and while she has lurched about erratically and glassy-eyed since. The woman is only 40. There has been a spate of celebrations lately as the famous and beautiful have hit the magic gateway into middle age while remaining famous and beautiful. There’s Tom Cruise on the male side of the ledger, but men have always been allowed to age more gracefully than women, allowed to retain their sex appeal well into their 60’s. Look at Cary Grant (well, don’t actually look at him, he’s dead, but look at his example), Sean Connery, even Willie Nelson. But now women are being allowed to stay sexy and beautiful past 40: Jodi Foster, Meg Ryan, Demi Moore (oops, she’s 39), Heather Locklear, Madonna, Kristin Scott Thomas, Michelle Pfeiffer are all smoking hot. But Tawny most certainly is not. Let’s not even get into the body thing, it’s her face that’s been ravaged by gravity, care and whatever, and turned into some kind of geological mishap. Good riddance - but in the meantime Chuck has to deal with all the crap: divorce is never easy, he’s still waiting for the spike heel holes to fill in, and he has children to worry about. Hallelujah! The cable modem is up and running - I have CONTACT once again. I can go anywhere, do anything, communicate with virtually anyone. The winning streak had to end, Chuck will rebound, and it’s tough on a woman turning 40 with her looks pretty well shot when she has traded on them her whole life. No wonder she’s lashing out and losing it. Okay, I’m better now. Tuesday, April 16, 2002
Tour O the Blogs - Little Green Footballs/Charles Johnson The time has come: no more procrastination, no more digressions, obsessions, or detours down blind bloggy alleys. The time has come to take a serious look at Charles Johnson’s amazing Little Green Footballs: not a venereal disease, not a fall sport of leprechauns, but one premier stretch limo of a website and one remarkable blog. Before we peer enviously at this tender site, let’s take a look at Charles himself, who is rather remarkable in his own right. According to his bio, Charles has been “involved with computers since the Neolithic age,” which, I’m told is a long time ago. Starting with an 16K Atari machine, he learned the Basic, 6502, and 68000 languages (I like people languages because they aren’t named after numbers). Ascending the pyramid, he wrote for Atari mags, eventually becoming West Coast Editor of ST Log magazine. He then made software and hardware products for Ataris under the company name CodeHead Technologies (trip-py, bu-uddy), where he got serious design experience putting together the company’s packaging and manuals. Proving himself to be as versatile as he is talented, Johnson also found the time to become not just a “musician,” as in, “Yeah, I’m a musician - I was once in a band that opened for a band that opened for Culture Club in Fresno.” Charles became a Musician, playing guitar for such jazz and fusion greats as George Duke, Stanley Clarke, and Al Jarreau. He made his recording debut on Stanley Clarke’s seminal School Days album (have it, very impressed), co-wrote the title track for George Duke’s Reach For It (also have it, also very impressed - I interviewed George in his home studio for Japanese TV in about ‘83, I wonder if Charles was there), besides working on many another funky fresh recording and concert stage. In recent years he has toured the world with Al Jarreau (he of the eccentric e-nun-ci-aaa-tion) before heading back to the greenish glow of LGF Web and graphic design (more on the company later). Upon approaching the Little Green Footballs site, you will first notice that this isn’t just some blog - it is an elegant expression of design artistry in the form of a weblog/media link site. The lime football logo looks good enough to eat. For the visitor’s viewing pleasure there are rotating photos of Johnsonia: three cells in the upper right-hand corner with tropical fish, omelets, sprigs of spearmint, every manner of flora, doorknobs, squiggly lines, etc., and a larger cell in the upper left that is in fact a “detachable” slide show of Johnson’s bucolic travels through Europe, SoCal and other enviably scenic locales (often snapped from atop his trusty bicycle). While most blogs are single-story bungalows, Little Green Footballs is a plush mansion: every feature has a secondary, even tertiary level to it. Johnson doesn’t just make morally-attuned, eminently sensible, zero-tolerance-for-terrorism-in-its-many-ugly-forms posts for a legion of regular visitors; he also has a reader comment area that generates buzzing traffic of admirable quantity and quality. For example, I got sidetracked from writing this review yesterday by a fascinating semantic debate begun by Charles regarding the term “suicide bomber,” and its recent semi-replacement, “homicide bomber.” Charles doesn’t like “homicide bomber,” arguing,
Johnson’s readers have now posted 24 comments on the subject, coming up with some penetrating insights and excellent suggestions, including new appellations “exploding Arabs,” “human bomb,” “death cult bomber,” “suicide terrorist,” “genocide bomber,” "the latest impediment to a Palestinian State" "Arafat's willing executioners," “murder-suicide bomber,” “Islam[i]kazi,” “suicide murderer,” "Cowardly murderer who makes most reasonable people hope against hope for the existence of a just God and therefore the eternal torments of Hell for said cowardly murderer," "splodeydopes," and a proposed resurrection (oops, wrong religion) of “kamikaze.” Remember, all of this fast and furious action is taking place in the reader comment area; Charles’s readers - many bloggers themselves - are so intense and engaged they boisterously gather ‘round the metaphorical reeking dumpster in the back alley of his site to exchange ideas. Another example: the current CAIR (Council on American-Islamic Relations) Sharon war crimes poll controversy:
Now, 45 minutes later, the results are suddenly 11% against trying Sharon for crimes, 89% for, with 2,197 votes. Glenn [Reynolds] is much nicer about this than I want to be:
Quana had posted a comment last night presupposing what actually happened:
OTOH, I don't believe it really matters much either way. The results actually made me laugh out loud. What fun!
Here is the link to where the vote currently stands (with 3444 votes; 58% YES). It was over 12,000 votes last I checked and I looked back and read this:
A follow-up posting from Charles (back on the main blog) brought in Quana's aforementioned evidence:
Interestingly, though Johnson is rather evidently “zero-tolerance” on terrorism, he also sees himself as
Before 9/11, I wouldn’t have read one word of the National Review, for example. But the fall of the WTC had an extraordinary clarifying effect for me, and while I still consider myself basically liberal, many of the people most identified with that camp have behaved disgracefully since then. Besides the killer blog, comment section, action photos, and general design appeal, LGF has a cool “show all entries” feature that does just that in a single page, and a link to a page with the latest breaking news headlines under the headings “Top Stories,” “Web Development, “ “Internet Stories,” “Cycling,” and “Offbeat.” More you say? You want more? How about a reader’s preferences area where you can set your preferred font, print-size, and other predilections, which will pleasantly greet you upon your return, instructions as follows:
There is an ongoing reader’s poll. There are useful links galore (including 145 blogger links until the heading “Anti-Idiotarians,” Tres Producers thankfully included), and more, more, more. In fact there is so much, the site sometimes takes a while to load (but Charles has laid down the law: if his host doesn’t snap it up, pronto, he’s moving on to greener footballs, er, pastures). You’ve heard about the content, you’ve heard about the elegant, functional site features. You may say to yourself: this guy must be a site designer or something. Well, yes, he is. LGF is also a very successful “Web Design” company run by Charles and his brother Michael with offices in LA and San Francisco.
Clarity of purpose leads to effective design. We take pride in working with each client to determine the best approach for their particular web site, and we have developed a systematic method that virtually guarantees an effective and successful web site. Charles and Michael together have many years of computer experience; Charles was a very well-known programmer for the Atari ST line of personal computers, and for years owned a shareware company named “Little Green Footballs Software.” Hence the name of our web design firm. The actual roots of this unique name are lost in the mists of antiquity. (But under the right circumstances you might be able to convince Charles to tell the story.) Clearly, anything Charles Johnson does, he does very well, deftly balancing imposing skill with humor and a steely moral sense. A superior blog and individual. Priorities The Tigers may not be leading the latest Power Rankings, being that they are 0-11 and all, but Tiger pitcher Adam Pettyjohn still feels like a lucky guy.
Pettyjohn didn't have a mild case. Abdominal pain? He said he felt like his stomach "exploded." Weight loss? He dropped 65 pounds in less than three months. Fatigue? He became so weak that he was unable to feed himself, because he lacked the strength to lift a spoon to his mouth. He was finally admitted to Henry Ford Hospital (about 11 floors down from my dermatology clinic) three weeks ago, and had his colon surgically removed--the only definitive treatment for his ailment--under borderline emergency conditions. His surgery was deemed a success, and he was discharged on March 22. Monty Python Sperm Donator Dies Barry Took died on March 31 in London.
"The shows were a vital part of British life in the austere decades after World War II," according to Variety. But it was as comedy adviser to the British Broadcasting Corporation in 1969 that Mr. Took had perhaps his largest impact. He assembled six young comic talents, including John Cleese and Graham Chapman, and proposed a comedy show. Stop Me Before I Blow Myself Up Again! Flippant heading aside, this is absurd. The story's subtitle, "Conflict: Residents of the Jenin refugee camp speak of the viciousness of the Israeli attack," would seem to imply that the paper (LA Times) thinks there is a story here. Can you recall the last time there was a military conflict that wasn't "vicious"? When the antagonists didn't try to kill each other "viciously"? Perhaps the Israelis army should be rooting out bands of murderers by means of lethal injection, perhaps engage them in a pillow fight. I realize the thrust of the story is the treatment of Palestinian civilians:
Their accounts, which could not be independently confirmed, painted a picture of a vicious house-to-house battle in which Israeli soldiers faced Palestinian gunmen intermixed with the camp's civilian population. I am truly sickened by the plight of the Palestinian civilian: the average Yasser or Lukea who longs for peace and for a permanent place to lay his/her head and live a "normal" life. But his own leaders and "gunmen" are the ones who create his greatest misery, who are determined not to live in harmony with Israel in a just peace, but to "bulldoze" through with a romantically self-destructive, impossibly quixotic quest to make Israel vanish in a puff of suicidal/homicidal bomb smoke. If the PLO, etc., is so hell-bent on self-destruction, they should get into serious narcotics: at least they would have more fun and bother fewer people with their satanic delusions. Real News Now that we have that Supreme Court nonsense out of the way, it's time to get to some real news: the Cleveland Indians are #1 in the new CNNSI Power Rankings!! Who did you expect, the Tigers? (Thanks to bro Arne) Breaking Jerry, who is a lawyer by the way, reports that the Supreme Court has just struck down the Child Pornography Prevention Act of 1996. Broadway Jerry Man, Jerry has been on this story since Nathan gushed and Matthew muttered their mutual admiration and heartfelt good-byes as protagonists of the smoking hot Broadway musical version of "The Producers" a month ago.
Mr. Goodman's dismissal, after only 30 performances as Nathan Lane's replacement in the hit musical, occurred just after the Sunday matinee at the St. James Theater. Mr. Goodman was informed backstage via telephone by his London agent; the producers, including Rocco Landesman and Richard Frankel, who had helped cast Mr. Goodman, were not in attendance. ....Brian Cox, an actor and friend of Mr. Goodman who had seen "The Producers" on Saturday night, said he was disgusted by the manner — and the speed — of the dismissal. "Unlike the original cast that has previews to get it right, replacements are playing to 1,800 people straight away," Mr. Cox said. "And in my opinion, Henry was doing a great job. He got a standing ovation for his number in the second act. It was a very detailed, very focused performance." But it may have been that very intensity, and Mr. Goodman's classic British approach, that turned off the show's producers, Ms. Stroman said. "There are iconic moments — American moments — in `The Producers' that just weren't in his bones," she said. Despite his dismissal, Mr. Goodman will be compensated for the remaining eight months of his contract, which paid him approximately $15,000 a week. The Wisdom of Stoners I was born at the tail-end of the ‘50s, so deep down in the recesses of my infant brain I have a home there. Talk about full circle: the balls-out masculinity of the ‘50s is declared back by an actual woman, acting out a bit of Nixon-in-China irony in the Independent Women’s Forum:
Now, after September 11, we are all changed, and all this, like so many other confident predictions of the future, has ended. We don’t hear much about angry white males these days, or the supposedly alienated military. One of the best pieces of news comes from the U.S. Justice Department. In early October, just a few weeks after the terrorist attack, the department abruptly announced that it was dropping its support of a four-year-old sex-discrimination lawsuit brought by women who claimed that a running test for Philadelphia’s transit police was unfair to female applicants. ....Sorry, Brenda Berkman (and we appreciate your efforts on September 11), but sometimes, perhaps most of the time, those are jobs that only a guy can do, and if we lower our standards because some women may feel bad about not living up to them, it is going to cost lives. It took an act of monstrous criminality to show us this, but we now know that the crisis of masculinity is over and some of the worst excesses of affirmative action may be over. We’ve come to appreciate that there’s nothing like a guy. Resonating Richard Cohen in today's WaPo joins the discussion on the cultural atmosphere that condones suicide bombing, and the build-a-wall around Israel issue, which until recently was taken about as seriously as "ending welfare as we know it" in about 1995.
The absurdity of the term alerts you instantly to the nature of the Palestinian-Israeli struggle. It's a clash of cultures. One side could never use suicide bombers; the other serves them up on almost a daily basis. One side has soldiers who weep over the bodies of their dead comrades; the other has fighters who transform death into a political statement so that every funeral is a rally. ....Occupation powers do tough, mean things, and Israel has done them. Israel ought to get out of the West Bank, get out of the settlements -- and get a prime minister who at least believes in the peace process and is not a walking, talking provocation to the Palestinians. But as quickly as it can, it ought to build that fence, unilaterally disengaging from the Palestinians. What Robert Frost said about a New England wall applies to a Middle East fence. It would make for good neighbors. States vs. Brains Jeff Jarvis gets down on the idiocy of state-sponsored gambling:
I watched TV this weekend as it followed up on a guy who won $195 million in a lottery. All that money is going to fund the world's worst interior design and most overpriced cars, a tribute to the taste of trailer trash. It's a tragedy to steal this money from the poor. It's a tragedy to waste it on the stupid. Imagine what you could do with $325 million if you had brains. You could start a company. You could employ thousands. You could create billions of wealth. You could pay billions of taxes. I am libertarian enough to say gamble your nutsack away if you choose in a private setting; but the fact that I, through MY government, ENCOURAGES this kind of wasteful, amoral (at best) squandering of precious economic and psychic resources just prods my butt with a Joshua tree - the really big, mean, prickly kind. A Sure Sign Of Spring Here in Ohio, we have two seasons really -- Winter and Not Winter... So, forget the rain, forget the daffodils, forget the peepers, forget the sound of lawn mowers, forget the near tornado that buzzed by our houses yesterday, the surest sign that "Not Winter" has arrived came at 10:35pm last night when I dug the oscillating fan out of my closet and pointed it at my head so I could sleep without waking up in a puddle of sweat. Debate Over "Palestinians Formerly Known As Suicide Bombers" Rages On Jim Treacher jumps in the semantic debate regarding The Palestinians Formerly Known As Suicide Bombers, linking this article on the split between various media outlets, Ari Fleischer, and others who speak in public and HAVE PEOPLE LISTEN to dey asses. Jim offers two suggestions, one a bit more mellifluous than the other: "cowardly murderer who makes most reasonable people hope against hope for the existence of a just God and therefore the eternal torments of Hell for said cowardly murderer," which tickles the imagination but doesn't exactly roll off the tongue; and "splodeydope," which reminds me of Ren and Stimpy for some reason. Charles's site now up to 22 comments (more comments than some sites have readers) on the matter. What will Verbatim say? Monday, April 15, 2002
Charles In Charge - Semantics Charles Johnson has one ripsnorting semantic debate going on his site right now about the proper term for The Palestinians Formerly Called Suicide Bombers. Charles doesn’t like the new nom de blog, “homicide bombers,” arguing,
Life is always hard: there must be an underlying assumption that it is always worth living with all our might, for as long as possible - that the “better place” can, indeed must, wait. We can never be encouraged to hasten our departure or life - all we have for now - will not be credited with its full value. Religious leaders - and in this case Islamic leaders - must unambiguously assert the sacred value of life here on earth or their people will never put out the effort sufficient to achieve their full potentials: physical, moral or otherwise. Johnson’s readers have some penetrating insights and excellent suggestions, including new appellations: “exploding Arabs,” “human bomb,” “death cult bomber,” a resurrection of “kamikaze,” “suicide terrorist,” “genocide bomber,” "the latest impediment to a Palestinian State" "Arafat's willing executioners," “murder-suicide bomber,” “Islam[i]kazi,” and “suicide murderer.” These all have their merits, but there is some phrase out there that captures the horror and the nausea and the fatalism. Maybe they’ll go away before we think of it. I’m supposed to writing a new Tour O the Blogs for Johnson’s splendid Little Green Footballs site, but I keep finding things on it that I want to talk about separately, like this. May he forgive me - tomorrow is the day. Appeasement? Rope-a-Dope? A Third Way? There seems to be a gulf forming between bloggers regarding the administration’s Middle East policy: the “rope-a-dopers,” who believe that the apparent waffling is a ploy; and the “realists,” who believe “what you see is what you get,” and a waffle is not a pancake in disguise. Andrew Sullivan’s new “Force and Fraud” article in the Sunday Times of London exemplifies the former; a post from yesterday by Dr. Frank, and seconded by Charles Johnson, presents the latter view. Craig Schamp sees a middle way. Andrew’s case is this:
....the proof of the real intent of the administration has been in its subsequent response to Israel's refusal to prematurely end its campaign to root out the infrastructure of Palestinian terror. Apart from mild statements of concern and irritation, the administration has done nothing. Nor is it likely to do so. The critical thing with this tight-lipped administration is to watch what it does. Its inaction and reticence are eloquence personified. Cheney's trip ended in apparent failure; so, in all likelihood, will Powell's. But that, of course, for many in the administration, was the point. What the current Bush strategy is about is not solving the Israeli-Arab conflict - the Bush people are far too intelligent to believe that such a solution is even faintly feasible. What it's about is demonstrating to the world that no level of 'engagement' is likely to achieve anything worthwhile under current conditions. The new 'engagement' is primarily therefore a sham - for international consumption. Its purpose was beautifully illustrated last Friday as Colin Powell swiftly premised his upcoming meeting with Arafat on Arafat's unconditional condemnation - in Arabic - of the latest suicide bombing. Arafat, who supports, orchestrates and pays for such murders of civilians, unsurprisingly said nothing. Quod erat demonstrandum. You couldn't have had a clearer illustration to the world of who exactly Arafat is, and the folly of talking to him about anything to do with peace. [Arafat’s spokesman did condemn the bombing in Arabic, yet Arafat's wife defended it the same day] ....Powell should not be misread either. The notion that he is some sort of gadfly in the administration, an internal dissident bravely trying to forge peace while his fellow cabinet members wage war, is as convenient a fiction for the administration as the notion that Bush is really a sworn antagonist of Sharon. Powell is as much a team-player, as Bush is a friend of Israel. Any government waging war must have a diplomatic wing, to soothe allies, placate world opinion, buy time, and so on. Powell was selected as secretary of state for precisely that reason, and he has performed admirably. He is the good cop to Rumsfeld's bad cop. But no-one doubts who the sheriff is. And if you think the recent flurry of diplomacy is a sign that the sheriff has gone wobbly on terrorism, or has been distracted from his essential mission of aiming at Saddam, you'd be very much mistaken. .....When the regimes in Tehran and Baghdad are defeated, independence for a free Palestine alongside Israel will be possible. Until then, all the diplomacy in the world is mere window-dressing. And Bush is turning into something of a master decorator.
....I would love to be mistaken, but the widespread "rope-a-dope" interpretation of US maneuvering (as Glenn Reynolds has called it) seems more doubtful than ever....the Powell mission was indeed clearly intended to fail, in order to buy time, to forestall the inevitable re-escalation of attacks, perhaps even to allow Israel to proceed with a bit more of its ruthless crackdown and round-up of terror perpetrators, to put off the terrible choices which must inevitably be made. The failure has succeeded, but at a cost: the sacrifice of the moral clarity which was once the administration's chief strength in the debate, despite European charges of "simplisme." In a way, the administration has in fact adopted the "sophisticated" approach preferred by the Europeans (though I daresay Bush will get scant credit from them for the conversion.) All they are saying is "give appeasement a chance." It will not work. The weakly-worded condemnation of terror, which could be extracted from a reluctant Arafat only by applying maximum diplomatic pressure, changes nothing....Arafat refuses to consider a "cease fire" (that is, he denounces, but refuses to call a halt to the terrorism he claims to condemn) until his demands are met. ....All that is required is that the promoters and practitioners of terrorist activity as a form of political "activism" or "resistance" believe that such blackmail allows them to gain ground against the powerful forces arrayed against them. As it stands, they have every reason to believe that suicide bombings advance their cause; thus, they have every reason to continue them. ....Perhaps the final round of the "rope-a-dope" is not yet at hand, and the shining brilliance of the real strategy behind the "sideshow" will soon be revealed. I'm not holding my breath, though.
....The diplomacy was frustrating to watch, but was probably necessary to prepare the way for the military action. Our new ally Pakistan is not Britain in its steadfast dedication to our alliance, but the alliance has been useful nonetheless. The diplomatic missions to Pakistan were necessary prerequisites. It gave the administration time to read the riot act to Musharraf, and the Taliban were given time to make fools of themselves through their spokesman in Pakistan, further weakening residual support they may have had. ....And while I would rather not have seen a meeting between Powell and Arafat, it hasn't yet produced the "peace for our times" speech that I expected. Sharon is apparently under little pressure to pull troops out of the West Bank immediately, and the operations are likely to yield valuable intelligence that Israel will pass along to the U.S. Meanwhile, Arafat and the Palestinian Authority are being shown for what they are: murderous despots who can't be trusted. ....It's not clear when Saddam Hussein will be attacked, but Bush and Blair have recently made statements that make it sound like the day is approaching. I'm not saying Bush is the puppet master in the Middle East, but there are a lot of things going on behind the scenes about which we can only speculate. It's reminiscent of those days in early October. We need to be patient again. Rally Coverage From an Unlikely Source Glenn Reynolds is rightfully concerned about the lack of emphasis the Washngton Pro-Israel rally is getting in the press. Ironically, the rally is getting good coverage from an unlikely source: NPR. At 4:40 they reported this:
We're all looking for Blue's Clues... You won't find Blue here, but you will find out what happens to a man's brain after spending 5 years talking a salt shaker made of felt... 9/11 Blog Book Please go to our new Warblogger Book Site set up by Max Power. Below is my first post to the site. Please let all of your fellow bloggers know about this. It's about you!
I agree that the best approach would be for bloggers to send in their favorite 9/11-related (or aftermath, any connection is fine) essays/blogs and then we'll just peer review them. I think Glenn should get the final say, since everyone knows and respects him, and he gets a shitload of traffic. We'd love for Andrew to write an intro/outro/prologue/conlogue/whatever. Max has nominated a charity, but we are still open to suggestion as to where the vast dinero will flow. We will dictate global policy based upon our largesse! Please tell your bloggy friends. Let the candidate essay/blogs flow! Cool Tunes - Little Axe/Adrian Sherwood Cool Tunes is a radio show in a magazine format Saturday nights at 10pm (Eastern) on WAPS in Akron, Ohio, and worldwide via the Web. I play new music, reissues, and preview shows coming to town each week. Musically it is among the widest-ranging 2 hours in the country: modern rock, punk, electronica, jazz, reggae and ska, roots rock, Americana, blues, world, funk, hip hop, avant garde, etc. - if it's cool I play it. Cool Tunes has been proudly serving humanity since 1990. Each week we also do a written feature on Tres Producers relating to an artist played on that week’s show. This week: Little Axe. Little Axe - guitarist Skip McDonald and famed producer/remixer Adrian Sherwood - have a fascinating new CD out soon on Fat Possum, Hard Grind. In a recording world full of bizarre hybrids - from metal-rap to industrial-lounge - Sherwood and McDonald have created a surprisingly successful and organic new slot: “dub-blues.” Wedding McDonald’s evocative, deeply bluesy guitar work, with samples of grizzled bluesmen and Sherwood’s reggae-inflected dub beats, trippy echoes and hyp-mo-tizing washes, Hard Grind subtly reaches in, gathers listeners, and transports them to a mythical, swampy southern shore where Robert Johnson trades riffs with King Tubby. “Dark as The Night, Cold as the Ground” opens the disc and creates a foreboding, lazy mood with McDonald’s shivery slide and otherworldly vocal samples reverberating around in the mix before slipping back into the grave. “One Drop Blues” creeps in on an ominous dub beat and layers melodica with a sea of electric and acoustic guitars. “All Night Party” borrows a vocal sample from labelmate Junior Kimbrough's classic track “All Night Long.” “Long Way To Go” reaches down into a reggae dub nether world to support backwards-tracked guitar solos for a dark subterranean ride. “Down to the Valley” does shocking, groovy things to this traditional gospel tune (recorded as “Down to the River to Pray” by Alison Krauss for the O Brother, Where Art Thou? soundtrack), bringing in live vocals from Ghetto Priest, Bim Sherman, and McDonald, calling into question what kind of praying is going on down there. McDonald has the blues in his blood, having absorbed traditional music from his father. For Sherwood, dub-blues is a continuation of 20+ years on the beat-music scene where reggae, dub, industrial and world music come together to form a sinuous, thumping whole. Infatuated with reggae and dub from an early age, Sherwood was a London club DJ in his early-teens. By his early-20s, Sherwood had owned three labels: Caribgems, Hitrun, and the legendary On-U-Sound, which continues to this day. For On-U-Sound, which began as a loose live performance group in ‘79, Sherwood has produced/performed with a rotating cast under various guises including African Head Charge, Creation Rebel, Dub Syndicate, New Age Steppers, Mark Stewart and Maffia, and most famously, Tackhead. He has also produced other reggae/dub artists including the great Lee “Scratch” Perry, Prince Far I, Bim Sherman, Singers and Players, and Little Annie. Sherwood was born on the outskirts of London in 1958. By the tender age of 11, he was lurking about the door of a reggae club to hear the music. Within two years he was DJing at the club for teenage reggae parties. Sherwood attributes his proclivity for black music to growing up in a multiracial community. “I think England’s unique, in that we have a very, very healthy cross-fertilization of musical cultures in London. I have mates who are Indian, Chinese, Japanese, African, Jamaican - everybody’s in London and everyone does tend to mix up a lot here.” After high school, Sherwood and a Jamaican friend started buying Jamaican reggae records and reselling them in the north of England where such things were scarce. Within a year they were doing well enough to start their own label, Caribgems, which released reggae albums by Black Uhuru, Trinity, Dillinger and others in the U.K. (now rereleased by Sherwood under his Pressure imprint). “I loved reggae first, but then dub became the thing. We used to smoke loads of weed and sit around, and the dub records were great: all the funny noises and everything. While you are lying on your back, with a very nice spliff and a huge bassline running over your chest, it’s fucking great,” he affirms. Although Sherwood plays “some bass,” he considers the mixing board his main instrument, appropriate for his transformation from DJ to producer. “I bullshit my way along, really,” he says. “I had enough money to run a session, so I ran a session. I paid the musicians, told the bass player what to play. I made a kind of dub album - for like $300 U.S. (rereleased as Creation Rebel’s Historic Moments) - and it sold a lot more than the stuff we had licensed from Jamaica because I made it for people like myself, who wanted it a bit spacier. “I thought this is easy. You get together some good players, you get the whole system together. If you pay for the musicians and studio time, and you run a session, then you’re the producer. Then by playing more and more I got more proficient and more confident, and as the years went by people started paying me good amounts of money to help them make their records.” The On-U-Sound label was started 1980; around ‘84 Sherwood met drummer Keith Leblanc, bassist Doug Wimbish (later of Living Colour), and McDonald - who collectively had been the house band at seminal rap label Sugar Hill Records - at the New Music Seminar in New York, and together they became Tackhead. All are featured on Hard Grind as well. Performing/recording on their own and with toaster Gary Clail, Tackhead put on extravaganzas in the mid-‘80s with live and recorded music, “all twisted and dubbed live through the P.A. mixing desk while maybe three rhythms, sound effects and chants play[ed] simultaneously.” Sherwood has also greatly affected the course of industrial music. After veering toward harder beats and the liberal use of sampling in his own music in the mid-’80s, Sherwood midwifed Ministry’s transformation from poppy techno-weenies into the dark, edgy industrialists as whom they are known and feared today. It was Sherwood who transformed Jourgensen’s faux-English pop singing into distorted, whispery menace, raised the electronic beats in the mix to a mechanistic assault, and brought in a heavy quotient of noise for percussive and atmospheric effect on ‘85’s Twitch. In ‘87 Sherwood produced the rubbery, jagged industrio-funk of Cabaret Voltaire’s Code, with the dancefloor thumpers “Don’t Argue” and “Here To Go.” That same year he produced and remixed Skinny Puppy’s syncopated, undulating “Deep Down Trauma Hounds,” and in ‘88 he co-produced/co-mixed KMFDM’s clangorous Don’t Blow Your Top, including the dub/industrial tour de force “King Kong Dub Rubber Mix.” Sherwood completed his ‘80s industrial campaign by co-producing/remixing (with Keith Leblanc) Nine Inch Nails’ hip-hop/industrial masterpiece “Down In It” from the seminal Pretty Hate Machine. Sherwood also remixed a sensational, churning version of “Sin” from the album. In the ‘90s Sherwood has run his labels (On-U, Pressure), played/produced with Tackhead, Clail, Dub Syndicate and other configurations, co-produced the Fall, Shane MacGowan, Bim Sherman, and tackled a wide range of remixes. He is particularly pleased with the musical state of affairs in England today. “It’s very much like the punk-rock time really, a time of energy and optimism. None of the record companies know what to sign, there’s loads of good underground, a good club scene going again, and people believe the music is their’s. The drum and bass and jungle stuff, it’s got nothing to do with any other country; it’s our thing, which I think is great.” New Media In the Old, Part 2: On September 11
“Blogfather” Doc Searls In his OJR article "Media Web Logs For Fun and No Profit," Layne begins:
And then, instead of writing this column, I would add a bunch of nonsense to my Blogger buddy. It's freakin' addictive. So, if you write for a living, don't read this, and don't try the Web-log game. It's too easy, and it will Suck Your Soul Away.
You can blog from work, from a computer at a friend's house, anyplace equipped with a Web browser. And if you find yourself doing this, you're already doomed. I saw some weirdo blogging from the display computers at Circuit City the other day. It took all my willpower to keep from going to another computer and blogging a quick sentence: 'I cannot believe there's some jackass blogging from a Circuit City display computer.' But beyond the ease of blogging, why would anyone do it? I mean, unless somebody is paying you to write a Web log?
September 11 “Look at that destruction, that massive, senseless, cruel loss of human life, then I ask you to look in your hearts and see there is no room for neutrality in the issue of terrorism. You’re either with civilization or with terrorists.” Rudolf Giuliani to the United Nations General Assembly, October 1, 2001 American bloggers passionately chose civilization as hell unfolded. A reminder of that day:
Over 3,000 souls - including hundreds of rescue workers - from over 80 nations were lost, the preponderance literally disintegrated before a horrified, transfixed TV audience’s gaze. The 110 story twin towers of the World Trade Center, New York’s tallest buildings and the workplace of over 40,000 people, were impaled from the air and fatally injected with spite and hellfire jet fuel: American Airlines flight 11, scheduled Boston to Los Angeles carrying 92 people, struck north tower floors 95-102 at 8:48 a.m.; United Airlines flight 175, scheduled Boston to Los Angeles carrying 65, struck south tower floors 86-92 at 9:03 a.m. The inferno created by the raging jet fuel weakened the steel girders causing first the south (9:50 a.m.), then the north (10:29 a.m.) towers to crumble pathetically upon themselves generating great toxic tsunamis of gray ash and debris. A third building, 7 World Trade Center, collapsed in sympathy later that afternoon; there was extensive damage from the deluge of debris to all buildings surrounding the WTC complex. The horrifying visions of the planes embedding themselves in the buildings, the effulgence of flames springing from the wounds, and the subsequent implosion of the buildings were rerun on TV over and over before billions of eyes, burning themselves indelibly into the collective retina, focusing attention on one time and place as perhaps never before in world history. The redoubtable command center of American military might, Washington’s geometrically named Pentagon, was struck by another airliner-turned-missile - American Airlines flight 77, scheduled Washington to Los Angeles carrying 64, struck at 9:43 a.m. - killing almost 200 more. A fourth plane, presumably headed for another Washington-area governmental target, slammed into the earth in rural southwestern Pennsylvania - United Airlines flight 93, scheduled Newark to San Francisco carrying 45, crashed at 10:10 a.m. - killing all aboard after passengers learned of the fates of the three other hijacked planes via cell phone, resolved to not become a fourth implement of untold destruction, and physically attacked the hijackers with the fateful last words of passenger Todd Beamer, “Okay, let’s roll,” trailing off into history. The next day, September 12, Amy Harmon wrote an article for the NY Times, "Web Offers Both News and Comfort," looking at the behavior of the Web in general on the 11th.
....At www.Scripting.com, a site normally devoted to technical discussion of Web programming, people sent in pictures of the World Trade Center buildings collapsing and reports. "There is soot falling out of the sky outside my apartment in Brooklyn," wrote one contributor, Cameron Barrett. Early in the day, Dave Winer, the San Francisco-based owner of the site, posted a picture of his father, who he feared may have been near the Trade Center. Finally, late in the afternoon, he wrote that he had heard from him. "My dad is O.K." "We want to figure out why it happened, what it means and where we're going to go from here," said Mr. Winer. "The world's changed, and it's all very fresh. We need to talk about it."
....Dave Winer's Scripting News, in particular, sparkled. As news sites scrambled to post information, Scripting News had a wealth of material, and for most of the morning was an outstanding place to go for breaking news about the unfolding tragedies. "The Web has a lot more people to cover a story," Winer explained on the site on Wednesday. "We, collectively, got on it very quickly once it was clear that the news sites were choked with flow and didn't have very much info.... There's power in the new communication and development medium we're mastering. Far from being dead, the Web is just getting started."
And over the past week, the pictures of crashing planes, while dramatic, have become repetitive. The newspaper front pages have captured the mood, but I cannot wade through the acres of print they devote to the continuing crisis. The online news sites are useful for a quick check of breaking news, but I am looking for something more. And that I have been finding on weblogs. Some, such as Kottke.org and Dave Winer's Scripting.com, are well-established technology weblogs which have interrupted normal service to bring their take on the crisis. A few, such as wtc-filter, Matt Welch's "warblog", and the Guardian's own crisis special, are instant publications set up to cover the story. Denton also sees blogs as an antidote to the impersonal, imperious tone of the major media.
But most of all, I like the complexity of opinion and information. Most of the key weblogs have linked to commentary by sympathetic Afghans, to articles by Robert Fisk, the Independent's resident Arabist. Jason Kottke pointed to an online guide to Arab-Americans, which provided vital information too basic for newspapers to carry.
The following day, 9/21, Thomas Nord, in the Louisville Courier-Journal, covered similar ground in "Blogs Capture More Personal Stories of Tragedy."
As usual, Weld could see the World Trade Center as he followed his route from his apartment to his SoHo office. From off in the distance came the sound of an explosion. Riding alongside on her bike, Weld's wife, Jennifer Tracy, suggested that it might be some sort of construction accident. But then thick black smoke started pouring from the center's north tower, and people started running. Instinctively, Weld grabbed the tiny Canon ELF digital camera he carries with him and started taking pictures. In the past, Weld might have sold the pictures to a newspaper, or simply saved them for their historic value. Instead, he put them online. ....beyond giving relevancy to Web sites maintained by mainstream news outlets and online magazines, the terrorist attacks on New York City and the Washington, D.C., area have created a new niche for the growing community of Web diarists like Weld. ...."I started it just under a year ago, but it felt aimless," said Weld, who's 29. "Suddenly, I felt like it had purpose."
Sometimes they were raw, sometimes they were pretentious and sometimes they were flat-out wrong--I'd dare say that many times it was all three combined!--but the information was fresh and real and unmediated by any intervening institutions.
A last look at 9/11 and blogs appeared October 14 in the Florida Times-Union, Anick Jesdanun’s "In Online Logs, Web Authors Personalize Attacks, Retaliation," the title of which about sums it up. Most significantly, the story marked the earliest major reference I found to InstaPundit's Glenn Reynolds.
....''The mainstream media will run a story saying a bunch of people protested and quote them,'' said Reynolds, the law professor. ''I can take the quote and pick it apart and say it doesn't mean anything.'' ....A Weblog's readership is typically measured in the dozens or hundreds, usually friends, families, colleagues or other Webloggers. But since Sept. 11, many Weblogs [have] reported several times their normal readership. ''Some news sites started to provide links to blogs related to the attacks, and a whole new audience has been created for them,'' said Steve Jones, a communications professor at the University of Illinois-Chicago. Next: Part 3, Respect and Backlash Sunday, April 14, 2002
You Mean It Still Exists? Dean Landsman at DeanLand is starting a new discussion group on anti-Semitism - couldn't come at a more crucial time, a time to take action. I hope our friends in Europe pay attention. Publish or Die Jeff Jarvis (far too modestly), and Matt Welch discuss the possibility of a blog-derived 9/11 book. It's a great idea, it's not too late, and Glenn Reynolds should pick the essays. This must be done!! Weebles Wobble Kristol and Kagan seriously womp on the Bush administration's Middle East policy of the last few weeks.
Divided Mind According to Jim Hoagland in today's WaPo:
....This alone is sufficient cause for new disconnect in the Atlantic community. But there is more: America's absorption with homeland security and global terrorism occurs at a time of sweeping European redefinition and reconstruction. The European Union's 15 members are working out how -- not if -- they will incorporate 10 new members in the next two to four years, while NATO is set to extend into the Baltics and the Balkans this autumn with little public debate on either side of the Atlantic (or, oddly enough, in Moscow). InstaPower! Per our discussion last week, Brian Carnell contributes to InstaLore with more anecdotal evidence for the pervasive penetration of blogs into the collective psyche, or at least the popularity of Glenn Reynolds' InstaPundit:
Hatred of Success More wisdom on anti-Semitism and anti-Americanism from David Brooks in the Weekly Standard, tying together European elites, Islamic clerics and suicide - excuse me, “homicide” - bombers.
....in much of the world's eyes, two peoples--the Americans and the Jews--have emerged as the great exemplars of undeserved success. Americans and Israelis, in this view, are the money-mad molochs of the earth, the vulgarizers of morals, corrupters of culture, and proselytizers of idolatrous values. These two nations, it is said, practice conquest capitalism, overrunning poorer nations and exploiting weaker neighbors in their endless desire for more and more. These two peoples, the Americans and the Jews, in the view of the bourgeoisophobes, thrive precisely because they are spiritually stunted. It is their obliviousness to the holy things in life, their feverish energy, their injustice, their shallow pursuit of power and gain, that allow them to build fortunes, construct weapons, and play the role of hyperpower. Do Not Pinch Me I always look at the Sports section first: good way to ease into the day, especially on Sunday because the Plain Dealer has an additional baseball section. So before I looked at the paper, I was thinking to myself, “How unlikely would it be for any team to be 11-1 and to have won 10 in a row at this point in the season?” And of course, were there a team with that kind of extraordinary record, it would have to be the Yankees, or Mariners, or White Sox, or Diamondbacks, or Mets, or some other freaking team PICKED to win their division OR SOMETHING. But no, it’s the Cleveland Indians, who have now won just about every way known to man after a stunning comeback in the 8th yesterday - scoring 5 runs to tie it (another Lawton home run) - and then winning in the 9th on a WILD PITCH, and the winning is infectious and contagious (both). This feels like the ‘97 playoffs (prior to game 7 of the World Series), or like the sacred ‘95 season (prior to the World Series) when they just won and won and won and the town was in heaven. I feel rather strongly that Tony Pierce should address this matter in his baseball blog. At least Murray Chass of the NY Times doesn't ignore the Tribe.
Shapiro, Cleveland's rookie general manager, picked an interesting number of games. In 1984, when he was a high school junior, the Detroit Tigers won 35 of their first 40 games and never looked back, spending every day of the season in first place en route to winning the World Series. The Indians have had that kind of start, where they could be serving notice that other would-be American League Central contenders need not bother and making poor prognosticators of those who saw them falling from their first-place perch following Shapiro's off-season moves. |
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