Ben Hammersley.com: Chiasmus

What is a chiasmus? Glad you asked.

Ask not to whom you link,
but link to those who ask.

The News CNN Kept To Itself

I saw the above op-ed piece written by Eason Jordan. It was a stunning indictment of the brutal torture used by the former Iraqi regime to keep it’s people in line. It was also a confession that CNN had purposely censored the news, so that it could protect people on the ground. While it is possible that their motives were simply to protect people on the ground, it is also true they were complicit in creating a view of the regime that didn’t include the brutal acts outlined in the op-ed piece.

Then the Washington Post reports that there may have been a lot more complicity going on behind the scenes.

” The day after one such meeting, I was on the roof of the Ministry of Information, preparing for my first “live shot” on CNN. A producer came up and handed me a sheet of paper with handwritten notes. “Tom Johnson wants you to read this on camera,” he said. I glanced at the paper. It was an item-by-item summary of points made by Information Minister Latif Jassim in an interview that morning with Mr. Johnson and Mr. Jordan.

The list was so long that there was no time during the live shot to provide context. I read the information minister’s points verbatim. Moments later, I was downstairs in the newsroom on the first floor of the Information Ministry. Mr. Johnson approached, having seen my performance on a TV monitor. “You were a bit flat there, Peter,” he said. Again, I was astonished. The president of CNN was telling me I seemed less-than-enthusiastic reading Saddam Hussein’s propaganda.”

The accusation is that CNN bought access by broadcasting the regimes message and by censoring anti-regime information. I can’t wait to see how this plays out.

Anyone who thinks media presents an unbiased view of the world needs their head examined.

Militant Wilsonianism

I am always on the lookout for interesting word combinations and changes in language. I ran across this phrase today in an review written by Ian Buruma about the book “Terror and Liberalism”, written by Paul Berman.

The phrase implies to me that a “Militant Wilsonian” would go to war to end wars. That one could have a bloody revolution in world affairs in order to bring about a more peaceful world. Interesting notion. It seems to be the meme of the day.

Here is a good history lesson about Woodron Wilson and what Wilsonianism might represent.

There has been a lot of looting reported in Iraq. It appears tha government buildings have been hit the hardest, but that other places like museums, hotels, and ordinary businesses have been hit.

I was listening to a MPR on the way to work this morninig. The guest, Fawaz Gerges, who is chair of Middle Eastern and International Studies at Sarah Lawrence College in New York, seemed to be very well informed about Arab perceptions of the U.S. He is also the author of America and Political Islam: Clash of Interests or Clash of Cultures?

One bit he talked about confused me. He seemed to indicate the the Arab view, and by extension his view, was that the prevention of looting was the responsibility of the U.S. While I agree that we should provide security in Iraq and do our best to restore order (fulfilling our duties as described in the Geneva Convention), the responsibility for looting belongs squarely on the shoulders of the looters.

Let em say that again, more clearly. Looters are responsible for looting.

He also stated that Arabs very much want the U.S. out of Iraq and not to serve as a occupying force. Does anyone else see the coutradiction here. Get out of our country, but before you do be our police because we cannot restore order on our own. Seems like a no win situation to me.

If someone if familiar with Arab cultural practice or the typical interpretation of the Koran, what is normative Arab or Muslim behaviour in regards to looting? Is it acceptable in certain circumstances.

See subject. I am so happy, I have finally cleared this all important first hurdle. Next thing you know I’ll be quoted in the NY Times as an outhority.

Here are a few links that provide some framework for discussing the term “social software.”

• sylloge.com
  
• spiked-online.com
  
• radio.weblogs.com
  
• umontreal.c
  
• usemod.com
  
• Joel on Software
  

As I research the term, I am not sure I like it. Of course I didn’t like the term blogging or weblog or weblication when I first heard them either. Some of the defintions try and make too much of “social software”, turning it into a panacea that will spread democracy and peace on earth. I think that is asking too much of software.

It reminds me of the hype people spread about the internet in 1996 or so, before the bubble really started. There was a myth that the world connected by IP addresses would suddenly link arms in one anarchic but peaceful demonstration of techno libertarianism that would cause the ultimate revolution in world affairs. It didn’t quite happen that way.

I’ll have to keep thinking about this.

“In the early 1950s, the Dayak people of Borneo suffered from malaria. The World Health Organization had a solution: it sprayed large amounts of DDT to kill the mosquitoes that carried the malaria. The mosquitoes died; the malaria declined; so far, so good. But there were side effects. Among the first was that the roofs of people’s houses began to fall down on their heads. It seemed that the DDT was also killing a parasitic wasp that had previously controlled thatch-eating caterpillars. Worse, the DDT-poisoned insects were eaten by geckos, which were eaten by cats. The cats started to die, the rats flourished, and the people were threatened by potential outbreaks of typhus and plague. To cope with these problems, which it had itself created, the World Health Organization was obliged to parachute 14,000 live cats into Borneo.”

–The Pursuit of Interconnections(PDF)

This is an excellent story about unintended consequences.

Unintended consequence stories abound. Consider the following.

• Iraq was our ally in the Iran versus Iraq war. We (the U.S.) gave weapons, aid, and expertise to Saddam Hussein. I don’t think we intended for him to brutally mistreat his own people, form networks with terror organizations, invade Kuwait, burn his own oil wells, murder his own people, but he did.
• We supported the Mujahedeen in Afghanistan to force out the Russian invasion of Afghanistan. Unfortunately, they turned into the Taliban, who we later went to Afghanistan to destroy.
• Central American, need I say more.
• Introducing mongoose(s) to kill rats, when rats threaten non-native sugar cane fields. Then the mongoose(s) kill native bird species. This has happened in Hawaii and other tropical islands.
• Propping up the Shaw of Iran, probably caused to some degree the Islamic revolution in Iran along with the anti-American sentiments.
• The creation of a weak, divided Iraq by the British in the post WWI era, probably set up conditions for a dictatorship run by an iron fist.

What is the point of that list? The point is that the next few steps in Iraq may have large unintended consequences. Decision need to be made with the future in mind, rather than simply the problem at hand. If not, there way well be large negative unintended side effects.

The problem is how can we predict the future? We can’t. What can we do? We can make a commitment to mop up our own messes.

Interesting Links

• Alternet Too liberal for my taste but examines similar issues in the middle east.
• Great definition and essay
• Sanctions versus war — Bulletin of the Atomic Scientist
• Cato Institute — Logical Conclusions: North Korea, Iran, and unintended consequences

peterme.com: In a Quaker State of Mind, or Why I Had Stopped Blogging

I wonder if my blog entries are better than silence. That’s a pretty high bar to jump over in my mind.

The Story of Thomas More, John Farrow

Very cool online book.

Why Blog?

I have been mulling over the question “Why should I blog?”

If you look at my entries over the last month you would notice the
primary subject was the War in Iraq. No one is pestering me for
interviews or position paper. As far as I can tell no one has linked to
anything I have written. Why do I bother to write it?

Here are the reasons I came up with for blogging.

1. I like the technology and it give me an excuse to learn some new things.
   I have learned how to parse RSS feeds in Perl and how to write
   MovableType plugin and use the MT libraries.
2. It’s trendy. I like being in on web trends.
3. I like web surfing, and I want to share what I find as well as keep
   a record somewhere where I can access it later.
4. I like writing, but don’t have time to write a novel and don’t
   think it’s likely my opinions will be picked up in the paper.
5. Blogging give me a way to connect with groups of people who are writing
   about the news in different ways from different perspectives.
6. I have always liked the idea of having a web page, because
   self-publishing is just neat. I mean if we have “Freedom of the Press”
   in the U.S. it is meaningless if you don’t have a press. The web let’s
   me have a press without all the expense of ink and distribution.
7. Self-expression is a deep part of my psyche. I want to know and
   understand myself and others. Blogging is a social activiy to some
   degree as you interact with a larger community of bloggers.
8. Blog aggregation is serving to detect memes very quickly. I would like
   my thoughts to be part of this. I want my vote to count in the chaos and
   millieu of other voices.
9. It’s anti monopoly. As href="http://cyberlaw.stanford.edu/lessig/blog/">Larry
   Lessig points out media is incredibly concentrated into a
   few owners now.

   “In 1992, 70% of prime time television was produced by independent
   producers; today, 75% is owned by networks. There are 91 “major” TV
   markets; 80% of them are owned by 6 companies. In 1947, 80% of
   newspapers were independent; that number is below 20% today. In the
   1970s, 10% of first run films in theaters was foreign; that number
   today is less than .5%.” Link

   My blogging is a voice of independant media, my voice.

But in the final analysis, does it really matter to anyone if I have a
blog? I think the answer is no. It doesn’t matter to anyone, except me.

Is this blog primarily driven by ego? I think the answer is yes. The
only part missing for me is validation, that someone reads and actually
cares about what I am writing. I mean, I can grep the Apache logs, but
it’s hard to know if someone simply crawled my site with a robot, ala
google or whether a human stopped by to see what I was thinking.

What is a blgo anyway? Tom Coates has a pretty good explanation.

Here are other folks take on the why’s of blogging.

• djuwudi.com
• PBS
• In a Dark Time