Sips from the Firehose
A blog that seeks to filter the internet into a refreshing, easily-gulped beverage
Nov 09
Posted: under Colombia, Current Affairs, Guerrilla War, Narcotraficantes, Politix, Travel, Web/Tech.
…and no, this is not some forgotten Hope & Crosby "Road" movie, co-starring Ginger Rogers & Betty Grable. This is a "Guest Post" by Janine, and I’m running it here because it’s well-written and also because I’m so frickin’ burned out right now that I would have great difficulty stringing together an account half as [...] [...more]
…and no, this is not some forgotten Hope & Crosby "Road" movie, co-starring Ginger Rogers & Betty Grable.
This is a "Guest Post" by Janine, and I’m running it here because it’s well-written and also because I’m so frickin’ burned out right now that I would have great difficulty stringing together an account half as coherent as this about some of the surprises we’ve encountered here during our "World Tour 2007-8" of Colombia for Andiaros and the government agency SENA. Earlier today, I was able to show the roomful of very young journalists here just how easy it is to use the TypePad software to post something to a blog (BTW – the pic that appears there was take about 2 months ago, in Moscow, at a restraurant located on "Clean Lake" across from the Moscow offices of OLMA.)
Anyway, here’s Janine:
This picture was taken by Dave through the window of a military checkpoint that we hit on the way to Baranquilla, a medium-sized city about an hour’s drive from
Cartagena. W
e hit a nasty rainstorm on the way here so it took us
nearly two hours. As we drove, our driver told us about how the road was
impassible only a few years ago because of the Guerillas/Narcotraffickers.
Now there are Colombian military stations every several kilometers along
the way that protect the road and have made it possible for people to make
the drive without fear.
To help us appreciate how things have changed, he told a personal story
about a bus trip he took to Bogota a few years ago. Part way there, the
bus was stopped by guerrillas who boarded the bus and demanded everyone’s
Cedulas (the national ID). They then consulted the laptop they carried
with them, looking up each person’s name in a database to see if they were
related to anyone rich enough or powerful enough to make them worth
kidnapping.(Dave and I noted this was an impressive use technology, albeit
for all the wrong reasons.)
As the Guerrillas checked IDs, they had one of the children on the bus go
around and collect everyone’s shoes, which he explained they did routinely
to make it harder for anyone to run away, especially when they are being
led through the jungle at night and stepping off a path in the dark could
cause serious damage to bare feet.
But what really amazed us about the story, was that apparently the
guerrilla’s radio discussion about the bus was picked up by the
US-supported Colombian army, which then called for a Black Hawk helicopter
to be sent to help them. That radio message was in turn intercepted by the
guerrillas, who took off once they realized they’d been discovered and
that the helicopter was on the way. (An interesting case of spy vs. spy,
and a moment that I think represents well the turning point that led to
these roads being so much safer.)
Unfortunately for the passengers on the bus, the guerrillas had already
poured gasoline all over the inside of the bus, which they planned to set
on fire before they left. They didn’t take the time to burn the bus. but
the passengers had to ride to the next town in a bus full of gas fumes so
strong it made most people sick. Still, I’m sure they all agreed it was
better than being kidnapped and walking barefoot through the jungle.
Today, he said he drives down these roads without fear, happy to see the
Colombian military on the side of the road. And I have to admit, Dave and
I both appreciated the soldiers a bit more after his story.
For my part, I’ve been amazed by how much more peaceful things are here
than they were just 6 years ago the first time I came to Colombia.
Everyone we’ve talked to about security has commented on the improvements,
how President Uribe has made such a difference by cracking down on
corruption and guerrilla activities, and how great it is that they can now
go out at night and travel the roads around the country without fear.
Sep 12
Posted: under Current Affairs, Politix, Web/Tech, Weblogs.
The Russian Equivalent of Wingnut Welfare More and more, I’m noticing that the news here in Russia (and yes, I do try to watch the news on TV here, despite the language barrier) seems to exist in some strange parallel universe. When I switch back and forth between the BBC World News, CNN International, and [...] [...more]
The Russian Equivalent of Wingnut Welfare
More and more, I’m noticing that the news here in Russia (and yes, I do try to watch the news on TV here, despite the language barrier) seems to exist in some strange parallel universe. When I switch back and forth between the BBC World News, CNN International, and then the Russian news on RBK and Channel First, there is a massive disconnect. Maybe it’s just because we’re in a particularly delicate election year – an editorial that ran in the Moscow Times recently talked about all the simmering uneasiness regarding Putin’s succession (the original ran in Vedomosti, and I can only hope that the editor who wrote it isn’t re-living a Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovitch right now).
Trying
to guess the identity of President Vladimir Putin’s choice as his
successor and how he or she will come to power is a game that just
continues to grow in popularity. Speculation is also swirling over
whether the next president will use the system Putin has created to
determine national and international policy, ditch the system
altogether, or keep parts of it.
Analysts
at Renaissance Capital, for example, believe the successor will either
follow the “Brezhnev model” and try to maintain the status quo, or will
be a reformer, following what they label the “Peter the Great model.”
These comparisons are a bit surprising, but not because of the nature
of historical parallels.
This issue is becoming particularly urgent because under Putin, a lot of people have amassed staggering wealth. Quite naturally, they’d like to keep it. And now that they have this much money, they can certainly shell out a few bucks here and there to, shall we say, “influence” things to continue going pretty much as they have in that past. Which is why speaking out about the theft, corruption, murder, intimidation and bombings here is becoming quite perilous.
Politics under these conditions is a third rail for established media. But there is still a great deal of interest in what is going on in this country that isn’t being talked about in the media. And as nature abhors a vacuum, so too does the media ecosystem.
Bloggers to the rescue
Here are the nut grafs:
Masha Lipman, a political expert at the Moscow
Carnegie Center, says that web forums like Live Journal provide an
arena for free debate that is no longer available in much of the
conventional media.
“There is indeed a lot of free exchange on
the Internet,” Lipman says. “The question in Russia is not that there
are no outlets where free expression is possible. The question is that
the Kremlin has radically marginalized all outlets that pursue even
reasonably independent editorial lines.
“Russians are the
second-largest group of users of Live Journal, a popular U.S. blogger
site. In Russia, the site currently has more than 1.1 million users and
67,500 interest groups. On September 5 alone, 1,600 new users joined
Live Journal in Russia and almost 500,000 new comments were posted.
Censorship Impossible?
“Actually,
I think the Internet is one of the reasons Russia is still not an
authoritarian regime, because you cannot really shut down the Internet
without very serious measures,” says Yulia Latynina, a political
commentator whose columns are frequently posted on Live Journal.
Just this week, a blogger got thrown in jail for two years for advocating revolution. The Kremlin has, belatedly, realized that they need to try to clamp down on the discussion online – but the tools that they’ve employed to do so have only ensured that more and more ordinary Russians are getting interested in what it is that was said that caused so much of a reaction.
However, the censorship is getting subtler and more insidious. Apparently, the Kremlin is paying bloggers to go into LiveJournal and produce pro-government content. Not out-and-out propaganda – the average Russian has very sensitive antennae that can pick up a bullshit press release a mile away. But apparently, they are getting sophisticated about producing content that subtly reinforces what the government wants you to see, hear and think.
The U.S., of course, has problems along these lines – it has long been an article of faith that bloggers and internet sites that promote the pro-Bush stance have been getting secret payments and support from the government and Bush’s allies. There’s even a phrase for it: “Wingnut Welfare.”
Still, it is inspiring to see that even under these conditions, the ordinary people on the web are brave enough, and inspired enough, to defy the attempts to brainwash them, to suppress them, to intimidate them. In this way, at least, the web is struggling to live up the hype of being the invention that allows freedom to reign … although I fear that the increasing sophistication of the governments to stack the ideological deck are only going to get more insidious.
Technorati Tags: Russia, blogs, blogging, LiveJournal, Putin, mind control
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May 23
Posted: under journalism, Online (Multi)Media, Politix, Travel, Weblogs.
The Future is Here: Russia and Estonia are living up to the fantasies of hack sci-fi authors and computer security salesmen. They are engaging in a virtual war. The reasons for this war are pretty thin – most political insiders in Moscow dismiss this as a shallow and meaningless concoction on the part of [...] [...more]
The Future is Here: Russia and Estonia are living up to the fantasies of hack sci-fi authors and computer security salesmen. They are engaging in a virtual war.
The reasons for this war are pretty thin – most political insiders in Moscow dismiss this as a shallow and meaningless concoction on the part of Putin, designed mainly to distract the Russian electorate in an election year. It’s old and time-worn tactic, but one that still finds favor with politicians that want to play the old magician "nothing up my sleeve" distraction game.
My friend Dave Mitchell devoted the latter part of a column on his blog to this issue, and I’ve had a front-row seat to some of the events as they have unfolded. In a nutshell, the Estonians took down a gaudy bronze statue of a Soviet soldier a couple weeks before the big May 9 V-E Day celebrations. Putin seized on the action (the Estonians were apparently not getting rid of the statue, just moving it to another place) and branded the Estonians as a bunch of pro-Nazi ingrates who were persecuting the ethnic Russians, yada yada blah blah.
I particularly liked the pictures of the forlorn pro-Russia protesters chasing after the Estonian ambassador’s car, as it pulled away from the embassy, on its way to a vacation. The "youth groups" that are making the most noise are widely known to be paid by the Kremlin to feign outrage and generate flashy TV images.
No big deal. But in the last couple of weeks, the conflict has moved to a whole new arena – cyberspace. Estonia’s economy is apparently quite web-dependent. Russian hackers have pretty much taken down the Estonian web presence through waves of DDoS attacks. (Quick explanation: DoS is "Denial of Service" which is what happens when a whole bunch of zombie robot slave computers under the control of a hacker all try to access your webservers at the same time. In real-world traffic terms, it’s like sending a million cars to jam the drive-thru windows of Mickey D’s.)
Check out the front page of the Moscow Times, scanned here for your convenience:
This is the story from a couple of weeks ago, when Putin gave a fiery speech during the May 9 parades, denouncing the Estonians.
The latest update from Moscow says that the tactic is starting to spread in the provocation/response pattern so familiar to anyone who’s paid attention to, well, just about any of the wars in the last century or so. Viz:
Hackers this year have also attacked the sites of groups as politically
disparate as the ultranationalist Movement Against Illegal Immigration;
the pro-Kremlin youth groups Nashi, Young Russia and Mestniye; and The
Other Russia, the opposition coalition that has organized a series of
Dissenters’ Marches this year.
Alexander Kalugin, a spokesman for Young Russia, said
a six-hour DDoS attack on his group’s web site in March was likely the
work of Estonian nationalists angered over its protests outside the
Estonian Embassy over plans to relocate a Soviet World War II monument
in central Tallinn that sparked a recent diplomatic dispute.
"We were burning Estonian banners and trampling an effigy of the Estonian president," Kalugin said.
The Movement Against Illegal Immigration had 40 of
its regional web sites struck by DDoS attacks from early February to
early April, said Alexander Belov, the organization’s leader.
Belov blamed the security services for carrying out the attacks under the pretext of battling extremism.
I’m tempted to say that any kind of warfare that doesn’t involve streets choked with bodies and rubble is an improvement – but I am uneasy. The fact that more and more people are getting hip to the idea that there are cheap and easy ways to hit below the belt; the fact that the web is still very vulnerable to this kind of thing – all that is definitely a blinking red light.
May 11
Posted: under Current Affairs, Politix, Travel.
In Russia, they threw a Victory in Europe celebration, and barred the public from attending From time to time, all the shops full of the latest European fashions and giant blazing neon signs trick me into forgetting that Moscow and Russia have some serious and profound differences. And then along comes something like Wednesday, and [...] [...more]
In Russia, they threw a Victory in Europe celebration, and barred the public from attending
From time to time, all the shops full of the latest European fashions and giant blazing neon signs trick me into forgetting that Moscow and Russia have some serious and profound differences. And then along comes something like Wednesday, and I find myself utterly puzzled, back at Square One, trying to figure out the rationale behind what I’ve seen.
Here’s the deal. For the last two weeks, the streets and buildings in Moscow have been growing giant red-orange banners and signs and decorations in preparation for the big May 9 Victory Day festivities. At stoplights all over Moscow, the government hired street people to hand out gaily-color ribbons to motorists and commuters, to be tied around car aerials, pinned to jackets or tied around children’s arms. I shot pictures of these giant Stalin-era 50-story apartment blocks, each with a letter spelling out 9 MAY. The papers were full of stories about whether or not there were going to be tanks and missiles launchers in the streets (how cool is THAT) along with rank after rank of grim-faced goose-stepping Red Army soldiers, and limping, medal-festooned veterans of the march to Berlin and the siege of Leningrad…
The day arrived and the streets were utterly deserted. I felt like a little kid on Christmas morning. Richard the IT Wizard, Olga and I set off to find the best place to see all the neat stuff go by. We walked to Tverskaya Street, which is a broad avenue, best described as "The Rodeo Drive of Moscow" that leads downhill to Ground Zero and the main gate into Red Square. As we approached the street, we noticed a big crowd crammed into the alley mouth.
It turned out that the Red Army was keeping the public off the sidewalks.
WTF?
Usually when you have a parade, you want the people all lined up on each side of the street, cheering, holding the little kids up to see, waving flags, tossing flowers, etc. I mean, the concept of a victory parade is one that has been around pretty much since Ceasar rode his chariot down the Appian Way and through the throngs of screeching 
Roman citizens with a slave next to him whispering "Remember, you are still mortal" in his ear…
I must have missed something. The Red Army soldiers were adamant. Nobody was allowed out on the street. The view we got from the alley mouth was approximately the same as you would get trying to watch TV from under the old athletic equipment crammed into the hall closet.
So we set off walking, hoping that we’d find some better vantage point. At every turn, we encountered the same thing. Streets blocked off, tense Red Army security saying "Nyet."
We got a great tour of the back alleys of all the old, neo-classical buildings north of the Kremlin. Some of them are quite spectacular. Some of them have curious steel and glass pyramids built in their courtyards.
We finally wound up on a slight hill, under the massive bronze statue of Dostoevsky, with a pretty good view (albeit from about 1/2 mile away) of the parade route. I figured this was as good a place as any to hang out. Then the wind kicked up and it started to rain. From far off, we heard thousands of men shouting – apparently the WWII veterans, when they entered Red Square. And of course, at this point, yet another Red Army officer appeared and gave us the bumrush.
I refused to give up. Richard’s feet were sore from an hour and 1/2′s walking, but I was on a mission. So we walked up to Pushkin Park, and over to Tverskaya again. There were all kinds of big colorful balloons bobbing in the chill breeze, but once again, the barricades were up and the guards were only letting people out, not in. A rather surly mob was starting to collect around the barricades, and people were passing bottles back and forth. I could see where this one was going, so I beat feet back to the hotel, but not before a squadron on MiG-29s and Su-27s flew over at about 300 ft. elevation and 600 mph. Man, that is LOUD. And impressive. Those are some big planes.
Anyway, it turns out that the only place to see the parade is 
to either be invited to Red Square (i.e. to be a veteran, a dignitary, or a current Army officer), or to watch it on TV. Which was a shame, because the soldiers were flawless in their close-order drill and they had all manner of cool equipment. Of course, in St. Petersburg, things were a little more relaxed, and they had video of all the old veterans allowing regular citizens to shoot their old machine guns and throw grenades.
The one saving grace is what you can see in the photos here (I will post more that I shot with the big Canon later) of the fireworks display that I got to watch from out my 7th floor window. They really did it up – from horizon to horizon, there were fireworks for at least 1/2 an hour over the Kremlin and the city center. Most of the shots that I got were somewhat blurry, but I managed to get the mini-tripod in place so that I got a couple of time exposures showing some of the lights over the domes and peaked roofs.
Jan 05
Posted: under Current Affairs, journalism, Politix, Web/Tech, Weblogs.
Dem. Congressman holds press conference in Second Life The techno-optimists will condemn this as another example of the messy real world intruding on their utopian cyber-reality (although damn few people still subscribe to this Pollyannaish view of the web as a place where we all sing the Smurf Tra-la-la-la song and skip happily through fields [...] [...more]
Dem. Congressman holds press conference in Second Life
The techno-optimists will condemn this as another example of the messy real world intruding on their utopian
cyber-reality (although damn few people still subscribe to this Pollyannaish view of the web as a place where we all sing the Smurf Tra-la-la-la song and skip happily through fields of sunlit daisies).
The hype merchants will seize this meme and use it to scam some more startup cash from gullible angel investors – "Yeahhhhh … see, it’s all comin’ together now! If wanna do business in Washington these days – and who doesn’t, right? – then you wanna get them where they are. Which is on the web. You can’t take the congressmen on junkets no more – in the real world – but there’s nothing in the law that says you can’t take them on a virtual private plane and golf junket, right? You wanna get in on the ground floor of this one, trust me pally … "
[Note from Dave: In retrospect, that's as good a scam as I've heard recently. Damn, I'm good! Someone get me an appointment with IdeaCrib and GrowThink! 
(C) 2007 Hard News Inc., all rights reserved.]
And the snarksters amongst us will wonder how many Congressmen are already trolling the notoriously kinky demimonde of Second Life et al., getting their Mark Foley on…
As jubilant Democrats in Washington celebrated their newfound
control of the U.S. Congress on Thursday, Rep. George Miller was doing
the same thing in a more unusual place: Second Life.
Miller appears to be the first member of Congress to hold something
akin to a press conference in this virtual world, which is operated by
Linden Lab and boasts its own currency and a population of more than 2
million "residents."
The event, which lasted about half an hour, took place in a virtual adaptation of the Capitol building on an island in Second Life.
Instead of a neo-classical dome, the virtual equivalent featured an
open-air amphitheater, mammoth video screens and an orange sky above.
There’s a massive "gold rush" fever going on right now, amongst marketers and advertising firms, still trying to wrap their expense-account fattened noodles around how to use Web 2.0 to hawk their shite. Hey – I’m not complaining. it’s keeping a lot of arrogant shit-for-brains in Beemers and Upper West Side 2+2s … and away from the rest of us bitgrunts. This event took place through the ausipices of the Clear Ink marketing firm, which set up the virtu-cast and tried to round up a Second Life crowd for something other than being tied up in stocks and spanked by a Rhinemaiden-type. (BTW – I have a grudging respect for Clear Ink – you gotta love anyplace that whimsically names one of its apps "Banana Slug" – shout out to the grads of Uncle Charlie’s Summer Camp, eh?)
The results for this little exercise are decidedly mixed – one the one hand, they got sweet coverage on CNet, and it fits in with the Democratic party strategy/belief that the future of the party lies with the cyber-connected Gen-X, Y & Zers – who are responding to the way that the Dems are reaching out to them on blogs and the net. The netroots, despite being derided by the entrenched Old Bull power structure as the "nutroots" were instrumental in the last election – and the news flash that they ain’t going away, but are going to come back in two years even harder seems to be penetrating even through the fabled Foggy Bottom reality-denial filters.
Thus, the Dems are moving aggressively to build their party’s presence in cyberspace, because they know that how you are perceived on the net winds up in the meatspace media.
But on the other hand, the anarchic nature of the net intruded even here (although at least they weren’t assaulted by swarms of flying penises – see earlier post in these regards) as a leather submissive-type wrapped himself around the podium during the conference. Not something you’d expect to see on C-Span. Although, once again, if the GOP had gotten another coupla few years, we might’ve tuned in to see Hastert wearing a leather cowl half-unzipped over the mouth and brandishing a flogger, while Ted Stevens sodomizes a tranquilized polar bear while arguing for more oil drilling in the ANWAR.
Was that over the top? Really? You think so? Ok, check it out – as more of our national discourse moves to the web, you are all going to find that the griefers out there are going to create surreal scenes of mass absurdity. Which, on some level, I find rather gratifying. Viz:
the elements of Second Life that make it attractive to users make it a
highly volatile place to work in. You can deal with nasty comments on
your corporate blog much more easily than you can handle someone with
in-world superpowers deciding that your press conference would be a
great venue to unveil his exploding chicken bombs that shower your
island with porn.
"Take someone and deprive
them of any sort of ‘real’ social contact. Give them the ability to
script any program, animate any action, or build any object through
intuitive processes. Allow them to own their creations, and to sell
them to the highest bidder. …Now make the person in question the
psychotic neighborhood kid who slashes holes in the back of the
schoolbus with his Swiss Army knife, and you will begin to realize the
Lovecraftian horror of Second Life. "
– Chris "Petey" Peterson, Second Life Safari (Not Safe For Work, unless you work for a marketing agency and are reading it for research. Ahem.)
If nothing else, as we work out how to toss a rope around this bucking bronco of Web 2.0, it’s going to make for some interesting viewing…
Dec 28
Posted: under Current Affairs, journalism, Politix, Travel.
I yanked a story yesterday about what happened to me when I covered a riot in Ecuador. Today, I see that the town of Buenaventura has gone Somalia. By which I mean, the joint has had a total breakdown of central authority, and the streets are controlled by the machinegun-toting gangs, vying for control of [...] [...more]
I yanked a story yesterday about what happened to me when I covered a riot in Ecuador. Today, I see that the town of Buenaventura has gone Somalia. By which I mean, the joint has had a total breakdown of central authority, and the streets are controlled by the machinegun-toting gangs, vying for control of the drug trade.
This is Buenaventura, a city where drug-traffickers and demobilized veterans of Colombia’s political violence are warring with a seriously underpowered police force in a struggle that has killed hundreds in the streets this year.
“They all are fighting for control of this zone because it’s close to the sea and that, for them, is strategic,” said Londono, who has run this church for eight years. “The young people look to them for jobs as a narco, an informer or a hit man.”
Some 215 miles southwest of Bogota, the city of 300,000 is the country’s largest port. It’s from here that the coffee is exported and the imported cars roll in.
The port is also a key way station for the world’s largest cocaine industry. Some 20 tons have been captured in and around Buenaventura this year, a third of all the cocaine netted along the Pacific coast.
Being poor and having a port make Buenaventura a tempting place for drug traffickers, said Roy Barrera, the region’s congressman. “This perverse marriage of these armed groups and drug traffickers has turned the town into a ghetto in the hands of the mafia.”
Lying halfway down Colombia’s 815-mile Pacific coast, Buenaventura is its biggest slum. According to the government, some 80 percent of the mostly Afro-Colombian population survives on less than $3 a day, compared with a national rate of 50 percent.
Killings have doubled in two years to top 300 in 2006 — 24 times the homicide rate of New York City. And that doesn’t include the unknown numbers who have disappeared.
The authorities appear to have little control over the daily slaughter.
Ahh, nostalgia. Apparently, in a cruel trick of fate, what was supposed to bring peace and stability to the country turns out to have only made things worse. The right-wing paramilitary death squads accepted a settlement, which means that the thugs and gunmen they used to employ are all sitting around with nothing to do …
Well, almost nothing, that is. This is a lesson that the U.S. is having to learn in Iraq, as well. When you have a generation of guys who have grown up knowing only war and killing, and you take away the structures (army, paramilitary group) that used to give them cohesion and a common goal, then you leave them sitting around with a lot of time on their hands and only one thing that they know how to do really well. It’s not long before an opportunistic criminal comes along and offers them a gig.
It’s like the bad noir movies of the 70s. Former soldiers who can’t acclimate to civilian life turn mercenary or turn criminal – not that there’s much difference between the two, really.
Things have gotten so bad in Buenaventura that Bishop Quintero was forced to flee the city after he denounced the drug traffickers.
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Nov 14
Posted: under Current Affairs, journalism, Politix, Web/Tech, Weblogs.
…although they are a strange and alarming bunch… Douglas Feith, widely derided as one of the key reasons that Iraq descended into the Pit of Hell … a neocon Defender of the Faith venal and small-minded enough that Gen. Tommy Franks called him “the fucking stupidest guy on the face of the earth.” Yeah, Feith [...] [...more]
…although they are a strange and alarming bunch…
Douglas Feith, widely derided as one of the key reasons that Iraq descended into the Pit of Hell … a neocon Defender of the Faith venal and small-minded enough that Gen. Tommy Franks called him “the fucking stupidest guy on the face of the earth.”
Yeah, Feith is banging the drum for dear departed Rummy, saying that if we only understood Rummy, the scales would fall from our eyes, and the full glory would just suffuse us like God’s love. Viz:
Those of us in his inner circle heard him say, over and over again: Our intelligence, in all senses of the term, is limited. We cannot predict the future. We must continually question our preconceptions and theories. If events contradict them, don’t suppress the bad news; rather, change your preconceptions and theories.
To quote Darkman: Oh, you gotta be shittin’ me.
If there is one constant of the Bush administration, it has been their commitment to denial. No mistakes were made. Things are going fine. Free people do bad things. The insurgency is in its last throes. Move along. Nothing to see here. Hey – the world changed on 9/11. Code Orange. Be afraid.
When all four branches of the armed services combined to call for Rumsfeld’s ouster, however, the jig was up. The Repub/neocon totem object of worship is anyone in the uniform of the armed services (well, as long as they don’t speak out against the war or anyone in authority, that is). If the military were to turn outright and openly against the Bushies (as is apparently happening, as many soldiers are starting to wake up to the conclusion that they and their friends are all dying for a hatful of hollow), then the Repubs and neocons would experience a total psychological breakdown. Up would be down, right would be wrong, and the whole political philosophy would …
would …
Would actually begin to resemble the surrealistic neo-zen exchanges of a Rumsfeld press conference.
And I just had to grab this last comment on the story from Sadly, No – this is hilarious. And disturbing. Disturbingly hilarious? Hilariously disturbing? Someone has been dwelling too long on the utterances of Rumsfeld, and I believe it hath made them mad…
Rumsfeld is a bundle of paradoxes, like a fascinating character in a work of epic literature.
Rumsfeld is a pile of dirty clothes, the ones that you think might
be clean enough to wear around the house, but not out on a date. And
then you have to go to the store. Should you wear the
suspiciously-smelling Rumsfeld? It is a fascinating mystery.
Rumsfeld is an apple strudel that someone has bitten into, and you
don’t know whether they decided to leave the rest because it was
unpleasant to taste, or they realized it wasn’t their apple strudel in
the first place.
Rumsfeld is an erect penis, existing percariously between relaxation
and ejaculation, easily coaxed into orgasm but ready to subside if
neglected. Do not use your mouth to further inflame Rumsfeld. He hates
that.
Rumsfeld is a stray booger that has landed on a work of great art.
One cannot wipe him away without risking a streak on the canvas, so one
must consider him to be part of the painting itself. He is multi-hued
green and will dry, in time. Be patient.
Rumsfeld is the midnight sun and the moon of the afternoon, a cancer
cell that may be a viable mutation, the breath of a newborn infant with
colic. He is life itself, with the sting of death ever-resting in his
tail. He does not actually have a tail, however. He enjoys cheese, not
for the purpose of consumption, but simply because it exists. It is
cheese, he is Donald Rumsfeld, all things have their proper place in
the world. He is content. Do not call him “Rummy”. He will become
cranky.
Technorati Tags: politics, Rumsfeld, Feith, Iraq
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Nov 08
Posted: under journalism, Online (Multi)Media, Politix, Web/Tech, Weblogs.
OK, OK, the parade has barely begun and the storm clouds are dumping. Over on Buzzmachine, Jarvis points out that, basically, wherever we go, there we are. So that in the future: Yes, this was an incredibly ugly, TV-run election in many races (including our Senate race in New Jersey) but I believe that we [...] [...more]
OK, OK, the parade has barely begun and the storm clouds are dumping.
Over on Buzzmachine, Jarvis points out that, basically, wherever we go, there we are. So that in the future:
Yes, this was an incredibly ugly, TV-run election in many races
(including our Senate race in New Jersey) but I believe that we will
see an ever-declining influence of television and political advertising
on TV in future elections. They will find new ways to get ugly in new
media.
Great. Can’t wait until the web is crammed with interruptive media messages cracking the stacks on our browsers to deliver their deep-voiced intonations of “Vote for my candidate … or your children will die!!!”
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Nov 08
Posted: under journalism, Online (Multi)Media, Politix, Web/Tech, Weblogs.
This election marks the shift of the balance of power – and not just from Republican to Democrat. No, the bigger shift was marked by this kudo from Howard Dean: The netroots community can be very proud. They’re playing a bigger role. Without the blogs, Jerry McInerny and Carole Shay (NH-1), would not have won. [...] [...more]
This election marks the shift of the balance of power – and not just from Republican to Democrat. No, the bigger shift was marked by this kudo from Howard Dean:
The netroots community can be very proud. They’re playing a bigger role.
Without the blogs, Jerry McInerny and Carole Shay (NH-1), would not
have won. Entirely grassroots effort, without support form the Party,
including us.
A big deal.
Here’s an even bigger deal. As you know, robocalls, flyers, low-ball
election techniques. We knew about that instantly because of the
blogs. We are not sure (Repubs) did it more than in the past, but we
knew about it faster. Updates every 10 minutes from people who called
1-888-DEM-VOTE. (or whatever). We were able to get lawyers to polling
places immediately.
The instantaneousness of the blogs, of people who read the blogs,
who get that information to us, is a huge improvement over 2004.
Yeah, Howard Dean gets it – not surprising for a man who has been way, way ahead of the rest of the Democratic party, and is dragging them, blinking in the unexpected sunlight, from the grave of defeat and irrelevance that they had dug for themselves (although some mossbacks Just. Don’t. Get. It.)
No less a source than the New York Times agrees, saying:
That the blog now has a firm place in the choreography of national events —
and in elections perhaps more so than in any other cultural exercise — is a boon
to the democratic process, said Jonathan Zittrain, a professor of Internet
governance at Oxford
University and a co-founder of the Berkman Center for Internet and Society
at Harvard.
“In a lot of ways they’re helping to set the agenda for the mainstream media
in fast-moving events like this,” Mr. Zittrain said. “They just need to be able
to produce enough that’s credible quickly to give a lead.”
And then this sobering news from the disintegrating sandcastle that used to be the MSM,
where all the circulation is down and all the news is bad: the LA Times canned Dean Baquet, the editor who had stood up to the Tribune Corp. stooges who are demanding potentially devastating layoffs. The Times is still a first-rate paper, one that only 20 years ago was derided for being "slow, gray and irrelevant."
But the problem with the Times is that it has defiantly stuck its fingers in its ears and screamed "Naa naa NAA I can’t HEAR YOU!!!" in regard to the realities of the New Media. The LA Times has seen this as a war – when instead, it should have been reaching out to bloggers like LAObserved (which has great coverage of this mess) or LAVoice, and figured out a way to bring them (and their readers, who appreciate the breath of fresh air they provide) into the Times info cloud.
Meanwhile, up at the St. Paul Pioneer Press, management is looking for ways to cut corners, pinch pennies and stave off pension fund bankruptcy.
So amidst the jubilation, there is sadness – the atmosphere at the Times was reported to be:
Times reporters described the atmosphere at the paper as "dismal," "rock bottom"
and "like a crypt." "I can’t imagine how you could ruin the reputation of a
paper and kill morale more quickly in one fell swoop" than to fire Baquet, said
one Times staffer in the paper’s Washington bureau. "We’re all just dumbstruck."
Times reporters and editors spoke on condition of anonymity because they feared
for their jobs.
In the wake of the dismal circulation numbers, and the surging credibility of the blogosphere and New Media, the handwriting is no longer on the wall. It is seared into the retinas of anyone paying attention. Of anyone who is not willfully blind.
There are those who have been paying attention, who have been making the smart, interesting choices. They will be the ones still standing in five years. I no longer think that the LA Times as we know it, will still be here when we hold our next mid-term elections.
So enjoy the coverage while you can. The A section of the Times today was excellent. Well worth investing an hour’s worth of time to peruse, to find interesting stories and sidebars and analyses. And then bag this edition up into one of those poly bags they sell at comic book stores and sock it away.
Because this is the end of an era – in both politics and in journalism.
BTW – check out the excellent gallery of glum faces at Majikthise’s blog - and compare them with the LA Times photo gallery of faces in the LA Times newsroom.
Nov 06
Posted: under Current Affairs, journalism, Politix.
This is so wrong, I don’t even know where to start. I can’t even figure out if I should snark or just throw up. These are clearly the writings of someone who should be chained to a rotary leash in his own back yard and fed powerful antipsychotics. Carville and Rove training a secret cadre [...] [...more]
This is so wrong, I don’t even know where to start. I can’t even figure out if I should snark or just throw up. These are clearly the writings of someone who should be chained to a rotary leash in his own back yard and fed powerful antipsychotics.
Carville and Rove training a secret cadre of “Middle Eastern democrats” ?
OMFG.
And they’d be honing their P.R. and electoral skills.
Yeah, those’ll come in handy the minute they step off the plane at Baghdad airport, still dizzy from the steep corkscrew in … those PR skills will last until they get the first whiff of cordite and rotting bodies.
The thing that shouldn’t shock me – but does – is the complete out-of-touchedness of this all. During the fading days of ’44, the OKW had a phrase for Der Fuhrer’s mental state – where he commanded the advance of divisions on the Eastern Front that had long since been chewed to bloody shreds by the advancing Red Army: “Cloud Cuckoo Land.”
Viz:
- We neoconservatives have been through a
startling few years. [...] The left had driven us from the Democratic
Party, stolen the “liberal” label, and successfully affixed to us the
name “neoconservative.”
- One area of neoconservative
thought that needs urgent reconsideration is the revolution in military
strategy that our neocon hero, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld,
has championed.
- We need to give more thought to how we
aid Middle Eastern moderates. [...] [W]e should develop and fund
training programs back at home that allow Middle Eastern democrats to
come to the United States–free of charge–to hone their electoral,
organizational, and public relations skills. James Carville and Karl
Rove should be the titular heads of this program.
- The
Bush administration deserves criticism for its failure to repair
America’s public diplomacy apparatus. No group other than neocons is
likely to figure out how to do that. We are, after all, a movement
whose raison d’être was combating anti-Americanism in the United
States. Who better, then, to combat it abroad?
- Prepare to Bomb Iran. Make no mistake, President Bush will need to bomb Iran’s nuclear facilities before leaving office.
- Recruit Joe Lieberman for 2008.Twice
in the last quarter-century we had the good fortune to see presidents
elected who were sympathetic to our understanding of the world. [...]
As for vice presidential candidates, how about Condoleezza Rice or even
Joe Lieberman? Lieberman says he’s still a Democrat. But there is no
place for him in that party. Like every one of us, he is a refugee.
He’s already endured the rigors of running for the White House. In
2008, he deserves another chance .
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