Tilting at windmills for a better tomorrow.
I think you can vacuum up more information and stimulation in 15 minutes walking through warblogs than two hours flipping through the cable and traditional network news. And if you do decide to channel surf, a tip: You’ll feel somewhat less filthy and a bit more informed if you spend more time with Jennings / Brokaw et al than with the younger, more sensationalistic reporters on Fox / CNN.
But don’t try and combine blogging and TV news – the mothership doesn’t like that.
Domestic anti-war sentiment is lessening as the war progresses. According to a radio report I caught today, polls showed around 67% support for military action in Iraq two days ago. But by this afternoon, that figure had risen to 77%. So 10% of people feel better about invasion now that it’s begun. There are a lot of reasons for this I can see — U.S. forces seem to be doing a good job of keeping civilian injuries very low, and we’re hearing more about Iraqis dancing in the streets to celebrate their liberation from Saddam. Here’s the bit (UPI) that really made me sit up:
A group of American anti-war demonstrators who came to Iraq with Japanese human shield volunteers made it across the border today with 14 hours of uncensored video, all shot without Iraqi government minders present. Kenneth Joseph, a young American pastor with the Assyrian Church of the East, told UPI the trip “had shocked me back to reality.” Some of the Iraqis he interviewed on camera “told me they would commit suicide if American bombing didn’t start. They were willing to see their homes demolished to gain their freedom from Saddam’s bloody tyranny. They convinced me that Saddam was a monster the likes of which the world had not seen since Stalin and Hitler. He and his sons are sick sadists. Their tales of slow torture and killing made me ill, such as people put in a huge shredder for plastic products, feet first so they could hear their screams as bodies got chewed up from foot to head.”
The liberation angle was not part of the discussion for most of the months leading up to war. Bush talked about WMD and disarmament, terrorism, etc. He only started playing the liberation card late in the game. And when it did come up, the left would respond that Iraqis had not requested U.S. or U.N. assistance in dealing with Saddam. But now that it’s clear that Iraqis welcome U.S. soldiers, the right gets to take credit for liberation, while the left has to deal with the fact that we’ve been actively resisting efforts to take out a brutal dictator, even if for good reasons.
It was during the 2nd SF protest that I first began to ask myself just how brutal a dictator Saddam would have to be for me (and others on the left) to become convinced that this might be a just war after all. Have your sentiments about this war changed since it began?
Big events week at the J-School coming up – I’m going to end up ragged. In addition to a week-long conference on multimedia training for mid-career journalists, we have three excellent events happening, all of which will be webcast live:
Monday, March 24 — Discussion and Q&A on weblogs and journalism with J.D. Lasica, Online Journalism Review and Rusty Foster, founder of kuro5hin.
Wednesday, March 26 – Presentation and Q&A on wireless technology with Cory Doctorow.
Thursday, March 27 – Presentation and Q&A on charging for online content with Vin Crosbie of Digital Deliverance.
Get your QuickTime plugins greased up!
Me to Amy, watching morning news: “Did you know we have a bomb called the MOAB — the Mother Of All Bombs?”
Amy to me, stepping out of shower: “Did you know my deodorant has “Super Deodorancy?” It says so right on the package.”
Clutter for OS X notes what iTunes is currently playing and finds the corresponding album cover at Amazon. That’s pretty groovy all by itself, just to orient yourself with the current recording. But you can also drag a cover to the desktop and click it later to hear all your songs from that album.
Millions of Americans tune in for The Great Spectacle, expecting “Shock and Awe” at unspeakable volumes. Instead they get hours of grainy footage of the back end of a tank in convoy plowing through the Iraqi desert. CNN tries to make the most of it, calling it “remarkable footage” and “historic,” which doesn’t change the fact that they’re broadcasting hours of the butt end of a tank because they have nothing else to show. Is America getting its money’s worth? No doubt some actual spectacle around the corner, but meanwhile how to keep the viewers from tuning out? Ah — treat them to a night with no commercials. Which of course means the competing network doesn’t get to do commercials either. There might not be a commercial for days! Who needs Tivo? Wife starts flipping channels. Protests clog NY, Philly, Washington. In SF more than 1000 are arrested. Fox brushes up against this news, does all it can not to treat it with revulsion. I mean with Shock and Awe. How can anyone protest at a time like this?, the reporter asks. Our boys are halfway across the world at risk of dying to protect our very right to protest, and they’re protesting? The irony is thick like chemical weapons gas, the reporter nearly coughs. Meanwhile, protestors vomit for peace. Fox puts convicted war criminal Oliver North in the field as a reporter — that’s what credibility is all about. And in case Ollie’s spiel is too complicated, Geraldo will be there to sign Iraqi women’s backsides. 16 die in a helicopter crash — 12 brits and a 4 yanks. Or so I hear on CNN. When Fox does the same story a few minutes later, they tell us that four people have died. If you’re not American your life isn’t worth prime-time mention. The info graphic tells me the cruising speed and gas mileage of the Abrams tank and I feel informed.
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Floating around, author unknown: A Warmonger Explains War with Iraq to a Peacenik.
Students involved with the J-School’s bIPlog have created Revolution Is Not an AOL Keyword (to the tune of Gil-Scot Heron’s “The Revolution Will Not Be Televised”) – a roster of interesting intellectual property links embedded in a “fair use” (?) reconstitution of the original poem.
Miles is on the brink of crawling. Up on his hands and knees rocking back and forth, falling forward falling back. And this morning he started spinning around, using his belly button as an axis. He does a full revolution and then looks up to see if we saw him do it, giant grin on his face. I told him he has “mad turntable skills.” Amy’s sister Lisa says he’s “doing the Lazy Susan.”
Rather than CNN or Fox News, we are watching Teletubbies this morning.
Have a nice war.
Went to see Damo Suzuki (once upon a time of Can) last night with Josh and Minette at the Hemlock club – packed into shoebox against mirrored walls, six musicians onstage. Damo was not at his best, I didn’t think – seemed to lack some spark or was not singing at full range or something. He does this improv thing with his voice that sounds so much like human language but is not. Crunching pulsing space rock, band was very good but not as good as bands we’ve seen him with before. One guy with Elton John star glasses played hammered dulcimer and a theremin signed by Robert Moog. It’s a very hard instrument to maintain pitch with, so there was an undertone of things being a bit off throughout — not totally unfitting the music. A great night, if not the best Damo night ever.
Here is a picture of Damo sleeping with a houseplant.
Had a big debate (argument?) on the way home about whether it makes sense to give panhandlers money. A topic for another day.
44% of Americans believe “that most or some of the 9/11 hijackers were Iraqi.” And no wonder, after the snow job our flaccid, compliant, conservative media has done on the American critical faculty. Looks like Salon is setting itself up as a counterweight to the waves of propaganda and quasi-reporting heading our way. They’ve already slipped a reporter into Iraqi Kurdistan on a raft in the dead of night. Salon should be a good resource to watch as the coming weeks unfold.
(Click)