Atomized Links:
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Atomized junior- The Web log
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Friday, 29 October, 2004
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All Wrong
The other day the President in a speech took another stab at what I
call the flypaper argument for the war. Usually it contains an
effusive and upbeat declaration that we have the insurgents or
terrorists (the preferred term) right were we want them. Busy engaged
with the US military in Iraq, far and safely away from American shores.
At the time he was trying to cast the slaughter of 49 new recruits for
the Iraqi Army as proof that his policies were working, and as
planned. If Zarqawi and his ilk weren't down in the bunker in
besieged Fallujah, they would clearly be here, and they would still be
they: armed, active, hostile and aggressive, mounting waves of terror
attacks across these United States. In the course of watching the
reaction to our attempts to press democratic elections on Iraq and
Afghanistan, I note an observation I've heard made. Democracy is the
revolution in these parts, not the insurgency, not "rebel" leaders like
Sadr. In the middle east the conventional, or at least familiar path
to power is violence -- strategic and tactical violence, assassinations
and demonstrations. The greater the vacuum the greater the
demonstration of violence. A considerable vacuum was created in Iraq
and a considerable opportunity for opportunists was born in the chaos.
I always believed that George W. Bush
intended to preside over his presidency with a minimum of fuss and
drama. He seemed to have worked out a personna for this; a sort of
genial Will Rogers. Warm personable and endlessly likable. More Reagan
than Reagan, a sure shouldered Atlas. Architect of the New world
Order. In the Fall of 2001 that had to change. So he exchanged it
for the Red Cross of Saint George, and turned to those advisors who
stepped forward with confidence and bold plans. I believe in giving the
President the benefit of doubt in foreign policy matters - particular
military. This is tradition and to enjoy a degree of it, a president's
prerogative. This is not a free pass though and no one should interpret
it as such. That is the difference between a democracy and big brother.
Almost from the start the judgment of the advisors seemed suspect. I
knew the administration was bear-baiting Saddam Hussein, I knew their
opinion on sanctions. I felt they had a reason and a plan. After
Secretary of State Powell went before the UN I knew that they didn't
know whether Iraq had Weapons of Mass destruction or not, or anything
definite about his relations with terror networks. I began to wonder
about their hell-bent drive for a war in Iraq. A war that has
been wrongly conceived of, and enacted upon at every juncture. 200
billion dollars and nearly 1200 American lives, untold civilian lives ('War raised Iraqi death rate by 100,000')
have been spent to create an anarchic wilderness. This can only be
possible when the first principles of your entire world view have
error.
The central policy document of the
administration is their Doctrine of Pre-emption. Its virtue, being
insight into the relative disparity of preparation time and operational
personnel, needed to carry out attacks of massive destruction.
Proportional to prior eras this has changed, while the outlay of
resources needed has not. For a non-state entity to become truly
dangerous it wants a state patron - maybe several. So the
administration choose to focus on the bad actors of international
governance. The message was "our hand has been tipped, if you are
playing this game, we will take you out." The problem with crafting
policy out of this message is that is that it is invalid to assume
the fundamentals of right and wrong have changed. That 11
September 2001 was the boundary to a new era with different rules of
conduct. Pre-emption has problems distinguishing between the
necessary and sufficient conditions for war. Beyond causality, the
notion that until you've been attacked, you haven't been attacked,
there is condition. Thunder implies lightening, one might even say
thunder necessarily implies lightening. Lightening sufficiently
explains the thunder. To bring death and destruction to a people,
unseat their leaders, hold their sovereignty in abeyance. These leaders
must be necessarily and sufficiently responsible for harm to you. This
must exist as a fact, it can not be done on distant presumption.
Attempting to create a uniformity between the war in Afghanistan and
in Iraq, and the 'war' on terror in general, the latter which can never be a war in
more that a metaphoric sense, breaks these bonds of condition. The
struggle against those who attack us and oppose our legitimate
interests will always be a practical affair consisting of particular
fights against particular foes on particular justifications. In use of
force in may resemble the former program of renditions and police
actions more often than not. By diplomacy it will proceed against
states, more often than not.
If Foreign Policy is made and realized through
the Department of Defense; then it is not the Department of Defense. It
is the department of external affairs. You have no real foreign policy,
only guns. This is the true meaning of the Cheney/Rumsfeld military,
which they have been shaping now for more than 25 years. A light mobile
mechanized force, with significant components of large bore firepower
mostly from air platforms. It has been specifically crafted to be
an active instrument of foreign policy. Easy to use because it was
created to use, to be the first choice for underscoring American
intention. Behind it a contingent of service providers much of it taken
up duties stripped away from the traditional military, and mercenary
supernumary forces that can do an armies job for a sub contractor's
pay. The Instrument of the new world order, a flame for moths of
action and desire. For all the rhetoric on evil, this policy is beyond
good and evil it recognizes only force and seeks after it's
monopoly. The question they ask: "isn't the world better off Saddam
Hussein ...?" Is the wrong question, its answer moot. The leaders of
men invariable ill-serve their followers, often beyond the level of
general mischief. If they make clandestine war, the choice is to meet
it clandestinely, or to make it apparent to meet it openly
That last contains an implicit question - make
it apparent - to whom? It's a pop quiz for your friends, other nations,
NGO's. Can they see it? You won't know unless you ask. Are they
cheerleading, are they silent, their support in the breech, or are they
letting friends drive drunk? If a war can have a quiz it can have a
grade. Taking care to distinguish the rational for a war from its
prosecution. Distinguishing the the effects of the opinions and
judgments of the professional military from the civilian leadership;
micro-managing , and ideologically harnessed. This leads onto the litany
of smaller errors that have plagued this affair. The non
occurrence of an Iraqi Force Stand down at the outset. the
indeterminacy of shock and awe, limits of air power to do more than
break a certain layer of material objects. Force planning that was
caught up in muddled thinking of on-ramps and off-ramps but not boots
on the ground. There was an inability or unwillingness to concede the
difference between mechanized warfare and peacekeeping. A nearly blind
refusal to see the forming insurgency. To mess with their wry
catch-phrase: you cant't lose the peace after winning the war, if the other side
understands itself still at war. They are under no obligations to fight
on our terms, or make themselves visible to high-tech intelligence. The
waves of carpet-bagging small worlders we threw at them did little to
turn the hearts and minds of the Iraqi people one way or the other.
Through it all we stuck to the pre-planned scenario, not making friends
outside it, we had our friend: Chalabi. Making enemies, and then not
dealing with them. What we regarded was always too apparent: the
oil (markets/contracts), permanent bases. Anything else culture,
security, weapons, any weapons, of mass, or merely conventional
destruction, were of obvious lesser importance.
Over year ago Michael Schrage wrote an insightful piece for a Washington Post Sunday outlook section (now a pdf from his website No Weapons no matter, we called Saddam's bluff)
He argues that one thing the Intelligence community seems to never have
done is look at WMD's from the Iraqi perspective, unable to work
on large scale programs if not openly at least with the degree's of
freedom enjoyed by Pakistan, India, Iran, and North Korea, (Brazil,
Argentina, Israel, etc.) They choose to place it all in stasis, but
behave like they might have something, leaving their opponents
guessing. For all their iconoclasm those often called the
Neo-conservatives within the administration who came from a background
of defense community anti-establishmentism couldn't see this. Their
vision ran only one way: the number and depravity of our
adversaries, and the size of their arsenals was always held to be
under-estimated. Schrage wrote another piece two weeks ago on the
likelihood of significant disinformation being in play currently and
the possible roles the internet is playing in that: In Wartime, Deceit Can Be the Better Part of Valor (washingtonpost.com).
A central point perhaps is Abu Ghraib, as a
symbol for what happens whenever we confront the enemy and the enemy is
a man. A mirror showing what we are willing to do. It tells us about
ourselves. The war on terror treads on the border of paranoia
where enemies, dark, lurking, and evil, abound. Any opposition becomes
or befriends the terror and meaning dissolves into fearfulness, action
into reaction. For Wolfowitz et al the architects of this war their
pride rescues them from the comparison, they will never look in the
mirror or learn from it.
Post script: Usually I try to work any links into a text in
a webbish bastardized MLA like way. This time most are just appearing
in a short list here. Mainly it was this three part New York Times
series by Michael Gordon that prodded me to the conclusion that the war
terror is too loosely defined to exist even for those who champion it,
its just a grab bag of separate rationalizations incapable of
coordination.
'Catastrophic Success': The Strategy to Secure Iraq Did Not Foresee a 2nd War, Poor Intelligence, Misled Troops About Risk of Drawn-Out War, and Early Analyses: 'A Long, Difficult and Probably Turbulent Process'. Also a pair of first person accounts from within the green zone earlier this year: WSJ reporter Farnaz Fassihi's email and the memo of the AEI member working with Coalition Provisional authority
reported on in the Village Voice earlier this year.
Also good is Naomi Klein's Baghdad in Year the Zero in Harpers. Additionally the CS Monitor has kept up a steady and consistently edited stories in a series called Iraq in Transition.
1:57:17 PM ;;
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Thursday, 28 October, 2004
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Greg Shaw
Its doubly sad that so soon after learning of the passing of BBC John
Peel , we also learn of the death of Greg Shaw founder of one of the
first underground music Zines. Before Option, before OP, before Sniffing
Glue. even before Max rnr and Flipside. Bomp! (and the label of the same name. Shaw was a friend to the Flamin'
Groovies, the Stooges and many others. Garage Rock as a catagory was
pretty much the result of his personal aesthetic.
The New York Times Music > Greg
Shaw, 55, Rock Enthusiast Who Loved Underground Music,
Dies, Cleaveland plain dealer Greg
Shaw, 55, was pioneer in spirited rock music.
10:56:48 PM ;;
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#FF0000 Sox
1918, 2004 : Boston Red Sox. World Champions. Thank you Johnny , nice hit.
One of my formr supervisors (Charles Wright) once called Carl
Yaztremski "the poor man's Ted Williams" heck I'd take a complement
like that any day.
2:47:38 PM ;;
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Wednesday, 27 October, 2004
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John Peel
As a reformed former college radio DJ (one can reform just so much
from that - it's chronic). I am saddened and feel a great loss at the
passing of John Peel
BBC NEWS | Entertainment | Legendary radio DJ John Peel dies.
I read a number of obits for him in a number of News outlets, but since
he was with the Beeb I linked to the BBC article. Another nice feature
offered in a side bar is a small slide show of some of the acts he was
influntial in the careers of: In pictures: The John Peel hit list including the Fall, Joy Division, Smiths and the White Stripes.
His own web page over at the BBC Radio 1 - John Peel
is full of information on his influence on the course of anglo american
rock. I primarily know of his work through the Peel Sessions collection
- live recordings he would invite bands to perform at the BBC's
studio's. There is a link to full list of these from that page each
giving the full details of that session.
Sign this one - For whom the bell Peels.
2:47:53 PM ;;
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Tuesday, 26 October, 2004
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Franchise Player
There has been a certain martial quality to some of the terminology being used in the run-up to the election. On NPR this morning
I heard John Kerry promise the people of some Baptist Church in Florida
an "Army of Lawyers" - to protect their right to vote. An Army of
Lawyers, has it really come to that? Do we have enough lawyers to
fight this war or will there be a draft? Kerry's statement had a
finger-in-the-eye quality to it as just on Friday the RNC had
annouced that they were filing a complaint with the FEC over DNC Voter
registration drives in Florida. The Washington Post article on this: GOP Accuses Democrats of Violating Campaign Law in Fla.
notes that the Democrats responded to that by providing a web link to
minutes of some county-level republican committee indicating that the
republicans were engaged in the same type of activity. The Post reports
a Bush campaign spokesman calling that a "desperate and hypocritical
attempt to divert attention". Let those French Surrender Monkeys
have irony, true Americans don't need it
Far be it for me to invoke the people who live in glass
houses rule on anyone's head. It seems that a perception has taken hold
among some of us that the electoral process is wrought with
fraud. True or not, it is already a reality to the character of
this election. So I try to set my mind back and recall: is this sort of
thing cyclic, or result of a particular set of causes and effects. Does
does it represent a bifurcation of the electorate divided
electorate an unprecedented bipolarity, or... Does it represents
the effects of expansion of electorate brought about by motor-voter
laws, and other simpler registration processes especially in
association. voter reg drives. Role of Soft money (and rules of
use) in modern mass voter registration efforts. When all this is over I
think a measurable expansion of the franchise will associated with
these changes in the laws and regulations. As well a lot of what is
being seen now as fraud, perfidy - FUD [Fear Uncertainty Doubt] is
simply the structural adjustments associated with this expansion.
I did a simple Google News search on the phrase --Voter registration Irregularities--
establishing my own node on this topic, which I will check
from time to time, (saving the list of the top twenty returns
each time). You could almost cook meals on the level of overheated
rhetoric thats showing up: the GOP's war on voting.
Still I think it safe to say there will be an appreciable amount of
ligation to this before the final gavel comes down. This is one
election where it's worth taking the time to make sure you show up at
the right polling place.
1:39:29 AM ;;
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Sunday, 24 October, 2004
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Escape from Mudville?
My sister, Ellen, was at the world series opener the other night. It's
a beautiful thing. My niece and nephew are conflicted, their
mother, my sister Ann, is a Red Sox fan. Their father, who is from
Utica, is a Yankee's fan. They are trying very hard to be noncommital. My father lived in St. Louis until he
was 12 then moved to Boston. He's good either way (even if in his day
ball players always hit the cut off man and never threw balls into the
dug out). I have no conflicts. At the same time a squad of
millionaires doesn't really carry the aspirations of the common man on
its back. I got Ring Lardner for that.
11:59:37 PM ;;
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Thursday, 21 October, 2004
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Red Sox Win ALCS
Red Sox Win ALCS. Can't resist. It happens so rarely. The Red Sox are going to the world Series . 
12:41:50 PM ;;
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Wednesday, 20 October, 2004
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Djinns and Texas PowerPop
Back over the weekend I was over at my sisters, my older sister, who
has the older two kids. Nicole and Lucas. I had brought my laptop with
me hoping to write some stuff over the weekend. That didn't
happen. Even though my Niece has two computers at her disposal, there
was a certain attraction to surfing about on my iBook. When I got it
out again back at my place I discovered I had a small window into the
world of an American seventh grader by tapping the top
windows back button. At the bottom of this pile representing the start the voyage English forums.com a forum thread on the longest word in the english language. Nathaniel and his Djinn pal Bartimaeus saving London or
what's left of it after the Golem looks about. (a tour
through the trivia quiz section of this site - a stack of correct
answers). This relates to the second book of the Bartimaeus trilogy by Jon Stroud released this year.
Next a meandering set of searches for the lyrics to the song 1985 by the Texas band Bowing for Soup. (I always go to Mp3 lyrics_org first
when I'm trying to find lyrics, I just get lyrics, nobody tries to
sell me anything) from there more sites until a link to the song
itself off the MTV site for BFS is settled on.
At this point there was input from her father downstairs and the browser switches course: Yahooligans > Yahooligans Science > search results: Science Fair Projects > IPL Kidspace Science Fair project Ideas > Agricultural ideas for Science fair projects > Bill Nye > Science Project ideas (rossarts). About then it was time for dinner.
Lucas was miffed that he has been requested to stay off his
favorite online games site. It was choking the light out of the
computer he uses faster than you can say "does that look like Kudzu to
you". Lucas is still too young to grasp the concept of a bad actor (crank the comments filter to four)
and it just seems unfair to him. In three days that machine grew
sixteen spyware programs and had its homepage slammed. It doesn't
do any good to suggest that a browser other than Internet explorer be
used. These are wintell boxes and IE is the browser that came in the
box. (actually Firefox is there too, now) I use Apple OS and don't have
always-on broadband, so I don't own the same problem yet. I know
Microsoft has a well appointed Internet Control Panel that can be
adjusted to eliminate nearly all of this (turn off all of active x,
turn off half of Java, slide all levers up!), If a site needs its bells
and whistle to work place its URL in 'trusted sites' slide the lever
down. Most people; though, expect and frankly want their computers and
the internet to behave as conveniently and simply as any other consumer
product. The internet isn't really like that - it's more like a
hanglider than a bicycle, always will be unless it's turned into
something else.
There is plenty of desire from many sectors to do just
that. It is an unfortunate validation of Microsoft's view (which made
IE, Outlook, XP and 2000 such a insecure group of products) that they
make their products as friendly as possible - as open to outside
control so the consumer needs do little, that the answer probably lies
with future MS products and protocols that are even more black box than
the current ones.
11:45:12 PM ;;
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Tuesday, 19 October, 2004
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Boston Red Sox Interregnum
I have taken a few evenings off from obsessively collecting
information about the election in order to follow the Red Sox through
another October After 4-2 victory, Red Sox Nation dares to dream.
It's the native New Englander in me. Like shoveling snow, or riding a
sled down a hill into a pond that may (or may not) be suitably frozen
over - it just has to be done. Frankly after the debacle of the
ALCS 3rd game, they've played as well as any team I've seen . They've
played the game as tenaciously as I've seen it played.
On NPR's Morning Edition today I believe I heard sound
bites from both Presidential candidates saying "That other candidate,
he's just trying to scare you." At least we know what these fellows are
going out on Halloween as. Each other. Dick Cheney will go, as he
always has, as himself.
Beyond all that; let the seventh game begin.
11:52:59 PM ;;
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Monday, 18 October, 2004
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I think I want my Maypo (Burger king part ii).
Creepy wasn't likely to be the only thing I had to say about that
commercial. But for a while over the past few days it seemed hard
to come up with anything that would improve on it. It is
difficult to put your finger on why you feel something is
'creepy', much less to fathom why someone else would think the same thing an
effective merchandising pitch. Slate columnist Seth Stevenson wrote a column on this last week The Return of the King.
I set that aside until I could sketch out a version of my own thoughts
then compared this with his. His approach is a practical one: to
deconstruct the commercial from the standpoint of what Burger King is
trying to do. Presumably this is a well thought-out marketing campaign The
double croissan'wich what they're selling here is what the
food industry calls an indulgent sandwich. Its
on the hard sell end of a market category largely owned by a competitor, especially
in mental geography. Advertising in such cases often will expand the
market but not affect market share. Your ads sell your competitors product. Therefore Burger King needs
something to break you out of any TV reverie you've allowed
yourself to sink into. Whatever does that, works for them. So comes the
marriage of the uncomfortable with the incomprehensible. The iconic big
plastic head, accident or deliberate, relates to past branding
work. Post nostalgic - begging for distance - to be read as ironic.
Offputting, while accomplishing the work of cutting through category
clutter and implanting brand information.
All that only gets you half way there. There is nothing
about that kneeling gargoyle king with its odd exaggerated pantomined
reactions and autonoman puppet aspect that I would immediately judge as
human. Anything you find staring at you silently when you wake up falls
into the category of night visitor. The classic nightmares, burdensome
and oppressive: incubus and succubus, are what suggest
themselves, or something out of Hoffman. In our indulgencey pandering
sovereign, a syncubus, on an errand run of malicious and subducted
eroticism. Offering friendly temptation, pardon from sanction, at a
moment of unguarded tranquility.
I had dreams as a small child that I would wake up to
find my self being watched over by a raggedy ann or raggedy andy doll
who would slip out of sight after a few moments. I didn't have a
raggedy ann or andy doll so this never struck me as being a good thing.
Neither does this king. I suspect that Burger Kings Ad agency passed
through the psychological spectrum (spectreum) on their way to
delivering this message.
Then there is the Subservient Chicken, but that's a whole other diet of worms.
11:16:25 PM ;;
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Thursday, 14 October, 2004
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Burgher King
Man that is one creepy commercial
11:15:10 PM ;;
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Wednesday, 13 October, 2004
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Shatner
For the past few weeks I've been hearing this song I can't get behind that
listening to the radio. I'm not sure when I first started hearing it -
like television commercials it probably didn't break into my
conciouness until it had been on a few times. William Shatner and Henry
Rollins, carrying on over frenetic beat drumming supplied - the radio
person informed me by Ben Folds. I assumed it was some sort of one off
deal, but eventually I heard another, then another and it dawned on me
that William Shatner has a new album on the streets. Yes he does WILLIAM SHATNER HAS BEEN.
Ben Folds produced it and the web site for it indicates that many
people shared in this endeavor. Aimee Mann is listed. Yesterday when I
decided I would have hit up the internet to find what this was all
about Blogdex which has been down
for about a week came back up and this link came from them saving me
the trouble. The Flash website has short interviews introducing each
song so you can sample the goodness. I thought the title cut was the
best.
As David Gedge with the band Wedding Present once sang "you can't
say it doesn't really matter this isn't tv, he isn't William Shatner..."
11:39:52 PM ;;
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Big River
When this story came out a few weeks ago: HoustonChronicle.com - Discarded or a sign? Jesus statue enthralls.
I wanted to write something on it. But I could never think of anything
to write. Rather then let it go completely I took a moment this morning
to write a poem :
Big River
Christ of the Rio Grande plastic
sunk in a sandbar
for no near reason
without papers
in midstream eddy
not towards either shore
visible
to every side, coming
north or south
along 277,
up route 57
from piedras negras
Lately removed
to the hallways
of the local authorities,
of eagle pass, who
with assigned concern
care for lost objects.
8:07:32 PM ;;
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Tuesday, 12 October, 2004
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What else is New(s)
I have to admit I've never really bought the idea that there
is massive political bias in the media. In some ways I see it as a case
of apples and oranges. Different segments of society each with their
own institutions and centers of economic and moral authority launch
their forays into and engage in the market place of ideas - which we
call the media as though it were one thing rather than many - by myriad
ways and means. Surveys can be produced that appear to show that the
opinions of journalists correlate with the responses of those who
identify with liberal causes and views. Though this also would
correlate broadly with those who have received education necessary to
write knowledgeably and effectively about public policy, and be
explained as well by this. The real culprit might be a liberal
education. There are those who feel that if we removed sociology or
anthropology, literature, from the curriculum; perhaps removed the
humanities altogether, we would be a better people. But we wouldn't be.
Even William F. Buckley uses commas occasionally. And at that juncture
it is easy enough to identify many journalists of a firm and obvious
conservatism.
Journalists are but the foot soldiers of
the media army. The companies they work for are corporations, firmly
embedded with the other businesses of their region and with them
partnered with the prevailing powers of the established regime. It is
here, at the level of the enterprise, that newspapers and books are
published, that programs are broadcast. Corporations also tend towards
being hierarchical organizations, narrowing the the delivered message
to the desires and benefit of single individuals. Sinclair
broadcasting has offered an well organized example of how this works :
The New York Times TV Group to Show Anti- Kerry Film on 62 Stations. And with no advertisements - as a public service.
Marvin Kalb was on NPR this morning The Right-Left Struggle of Media News,
arguing that American News organizations are skirting the limits of
objectivity under pressure from audiences looking only for confirming
messages. I had already written most of what's here by this point and I
listened to him particularly to see where he located the discussion, at
the level of the individual reporter commentator, their integrity. That
is their dedication to the professional prescripts of American
journalism: to at least attempt objectivity. Or at the level of their
organization. Web loggers also came up in this segment. It seemed clear
enough that web logging is plugged into feedback loops of amplifying
partisanship. Also that this is the only role they are most likely to
play. I didn't hear it from him, but I am gaining the sense from the
amount of discussion of politically colored web logs that there will
be a backlash against web logging on this account after the election. I
don't pretend to be Republican or assign a fixed neutrality to myself.
All the same I see a shadow requirement extending from belonging
to a civil society to be open minded and assess all ideas on their
particular and general merits. Not to be caught up in discourse as an
exercise in slogan hoisting.
Josh Marshall of TPM had an item which he wrote on for several days after the first debate. A Fox news reporter (Carl Cameron)
covering that debate, wrote up a parody, a scurrilous and defamatory
parody of a speech represented as being given by Sen. Kerry the next
day. No one with a genuine acquaintance with this election and
candidates would have taken it seriously. Fox News put it up on their
Web site. Until questions about its authenticity poured in - then they
took it down. Questioned by Marshall on this they put it over to an
overeager staffer's poor attempt at humor. This is the network that
drove hard on CBS and Dan Rather for weeks. Fox News - A Poor Attempt
At Journalism.
10:25:44 AM ;;
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Saturday, 9 October, 2004
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Michelle's War
In in keeping with my current desire to aim well behind the
current newscycle I want to write something that deals with last
Tuesdays debate rather than last nights. I did watch last nights
debate; was it just me or did those boys, Bush and Kerry, seem kinda
edgy.
One of the things I came across in mid-week was on Michelle Malkin's web space. ANNOYING AP BIAS So, what is her point? She is annoyed that Associated Press used phrase Cold efficiency to describe Cheney. But decides she likes it well enough in the course of writing about it: In
any case, all four candidates claim they have what it takes to kill the
terrorists wherever they are. I prefer it be done with "cold
efficiency," don't you? So it couldn't have been that bad,
pejorative or off base as it stood. Still she feels it necessary to see bias
by the non fact, the non occurence, of an AP story beginning with With gooey unctuousness, Sen. John Edwards etc...
Which she invents to demonstrate. What if the reporter had led with
that phrase, but used it to describe Cheney? What would Michelle have
thought of that?
Maybe the writer was just just doing his or her job, reporting what
they saw. Bringing and leaving no baggage at the scene. Maybe that, or
anything - anything at all, would leave her feeling
personally injured, seeing bias, seeking damages, and seething, at a
world set against her.
7:16:18 PM ;;
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Tuesday, 5 October, 2004
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Army Navy Games
Micheal O'Hanlan wrote an Op Ed in the post last Friday I had been waiting for. I wasn't waiting for his piece A Matter of Force -- and Fairness
(washingtonpost.com) necessarily, or in particular. I just wanted a
front section analysis piece on the state of the Army. If not
from the Washington Post then from one or another of the dreadnaughts
of the 4th estate. O'Hanlan has a gig over at the Brookings Inst. Iraq Index
I want to return to a moment in the debate last Thursday. President
Bush was trying to lambast Sen. Kerry for his glib slogan 'Wrong war
Wrong time Wrong country'. Which he repeated a number of times, then
followed with his own canned retort that this was no way to lead, that
it wasn't something that a commander in chief should say. First of all
this doesn't make the neccesary distinction that at the moment Sen.
Kerry is not commander in chief, he is engaged in seeking the
presidency which requires that he speak to differences in policy and
approach. To critisize. Moreover, I don't recall ever falling to
the ground and
curling up catotonic into a fetal position based on what anybody in
"higher" places thought felt or said. To the degree I felt the need to
be served by them, when I was a serviceman in the U S Navy, I liked it
best when I thought they had a clue. Occaisionaly that happened. I
don't want to suggest the President or anyone is in severe delusional
state concerning the service man's or woman's need for his input.
Looming far larger to the service man is the transcendant grounding you
have in the military: you have the work. you have a sense of duty that
extends far beyond the job description of a given billet. An ideal of
professionalism. A pragmatic centering on attacking the problem at hand.
You can see this in the recent turn around towards engaging the
insurgents in cities like Sammarra, Fallujah, and Etcetera US, Iraq Weigh major new offensives |
csmonitor. The political interest may have been not to have a spike in
fighting or american casualties in the run up to our election. The U S
military in Iraq understands it cannot cede cities for any legnth of
time to the insurgency. Certainly not and have any hope for a valid
Iraqi national election, which increasingly everything hangs on. It is
also notable that this fighting when it occurs has achieved
considerable local success which speaks to the quality and training of
American service personnel.
Along with this though there is the steady undercurrent of stories of
how stressfull and difficult this fight is. There is the bleak fact
that this war has cost the lives of over a thousand soldiers, marines
and sailors. The army is paying attention to this: Army May Reduce Length of Tours in Combat Zones
| NY Times. One of the very real questions in all this: is the U S
military over-extended. The Army has 10 active and 8 reserve
divisions around 485,000 personnel, the Marine corps another 175,000 in
a further 3 divisions (paired with a marine airwing). It used to be
thought this force level was adequate to fight one major war and an
additional regional war simultaniously. I recall being concerned when I
was in the 7th fleet that the Chinese launching an assualt across the
straits of Taiwan was considered a regional war scenario. With 140,000
troops still in Iraq at a time when the plan was to have this number
down to 40 or 50 thousand, its clear that force planning is strained.
Within a month the major units involved in Iraq will all have been
there twice. Much of this pressured rotation is simply a effect of a
more careful rotation being thrown into the shredder. It has
neccesitated a temporary inflation of the military by 25,000. This is
accomplished through stop-loss orders and activating portions of
the reserve not normally activated, but also through some fairly
agressive tactics on the Military's part towards its own personnal: see
Soldiers say they are being threatened with Iraq duty | metafilter. It may or may, not point towards raising the baseline force size .
As O'Hanlon's piece notes the critical measures are the rates of
retention and new enlistments. it is seen that as long as these
numbers. stay firm the all volunteer military can remain - volunteer (House Crushes Military Draft Bill (Reuters)). I
wonder further; though, who it is that is committing and
re-committing. This is a juncture point where if some
constitute portion of the American population demonstrates a preference
towards military service at a time of great strain, the make up and
nature of the US Military can change in a very small time frame. Todays
military seems better educated - outside of my rating and a few others
the number of people with high school degrees fell off rapidly. It also
is getting to be a decidedly southern enterprise. though in regard to
the American population of the South and West well balanced. The
question is to what degree does the military need to bear a resemblance
to the nation at whole, before it becomes more of an internal mercenary
force rather than a national military.
11:56:32 PM ;;
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Friday, 1 October, 2004
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Unibrow
A couple of weeks ago I wrote some posts defending wikipaedia. A thing
that probably doesn't need defending as much as it needs pay pals. I
didn't like the idea that information gatekeepers might be going on
disparaging it, working themselves up to bald statements that it was
just not real information at all. The general line I took was that
handbooks, factbooks, almanacs, and annual reports, and the libraries
and archives that collect them are all well and good. They tend to
collect information from the integer disciplines very well:
engineering, chemistry, etc. From the realm of culture society,
politics, art; they catch varying sublties of established culture,
respected and endowed. And sports - when bats hit balls, this is noted.
In the course of that I tried to come up with a decent
working definition of highbrow and lowbrow culture. On this wheel of
culture I suspected a lot of this collection management turned. Except
for occasional facets of ordinary manufacture somehow deemed worthy of
academic examination and classification, the common world lies low
unexplored and undescribed, in the hands of its immediate audience
only. The Web log Psuedopodium has turned out just such a defination.
[A]n institutional distinction. The lowbrow is subject to
cultural and economic pressure en masse; the highbrow is sustained
largely by individuals' nostalgia for roles which are (now) free of
such pressure.No one talks about a painting or a poem outside the brand
of its creator, whereas comics and science fiction packaging may barely
register the authors' names. ...It's all business, of course, but the
rhetoric of the businesses differ.
On the Internet, No One Knows You're an Ex-Abstract-Expressionist
High art being glamorized pre-industrial ,
hand crafted of a personal touch has some appeal
(and explanatory power). Turning to low art, lowbrow culture
openly depend[ing] on mass reproduction , and as
ephemeral as poster paper, where is the unique object, what is the
center, the source, of fascination in the phenomonen, what is being
contemplated
responded to? Where does one need to stand, and with what detachment in
order to see it? There is enough residual Fugazi in me to take some
comfort in the knowledge that largely no one who is not responding
knows or
cares.
[even as I write this, i admit I have not followed all the links in psuedpd.'s piece ]
11:41:04 PM ;;
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