Editorial Anxiety. There are literally tens of thousands of digital-bust-unemployed journalists plastering the streets of English speaking metropoles, and this guy gets to keep his job at the NY Times for months even though his editors knew he was seriously making up stuff for his reports? They must have been scared to sack him… what was it that he could leak after being fired? Or did they try to cover it up until it was no longer possible? Some serious journalistic self-flagellation going on at the NY Times.
The Most Disgusting Porn Spam Ever
I just received the most disgusting spam mail I ever saw. It read
“Iraqi Whores. People attacked in their homes and savagely raped at gunpoint. Footage smuggled out of Iraq by the troops who did it. Sexually deviant soldiers run wild. CNN would not play that footage.”
In all likelihood, this never happened. CNN would not play the tape, but they would certainly grill anyone who tried to cover that up. Certainly this is an advantage of embedding journalists with military units. If there had been embedded journalists in Eastern Europe in 1945, the Red Army’s soldiers would in all likelihood not have gang-raped two million women.
So if people invest money to shoot a film in which actors disguised as soldiers rape actresses disguised as Iraqi civilians there must be a) demand for this kind of material and they must b) have decided that the dollars they will earn are sufficient to bribe their conscience.
I am all for capitalism. And I have no ideological problems with pornography. But this is just disgusting.
Criticising the Critics.
The Washington Post’s Jonathan Chait has written an article critizising liberals for the fact that they are allegedly blinded by Bush-hatred –
“Perhaps the most disheartening development of the war — at home, anyway — is the number of liberals who have allowed Bush-hatred to take the place of thinking. Speaking with otherwise perceptive people, I have seen the same intellectual tics come up time and time again: If Bush is for it, I’m against it. If Bush says it, it must be a lie.”
But that’s not the interesting bit about his article, which is being published in a newspaper that – just a few weeks ago – told those of its readers who disagreed with the hawkish oped-line to shut up. The interesting bit is the following –
“[i]t’s entirely appropriate to question the honesty of Bush’s stated rationale for fighting. After all, the arguments he uses to justify his domestic agenda are shot through with deceit. (Consider his shifting, implausible and contradictory justifications for cutting taxes.) And it’s also true that a few elements of the administration’s evidence against Iraq have turned out to be overstatements or outright hoaxes. So Bush’s claims should never be taken at face value.”
How is that different from the above – “If Bush says it, it must be a lie”? Anyone?
And The Winner Could Be…
George W. Bush and Tony Blair – that is, if the Nobel Peace Price committee actually follows the advice of
“Jan Simonsen, formerly from the Progress Party, (now an independent MP), [who] have proposed George W. Bush and Tony Blair as candidates for the Nobel Peace Prize, following the successful war on Iraq”
as Bjorn Staerk tells us today. While he realizes that giving the two politicians the price would infringe its fundamental idea, he argues that this has become a practice in recent years anyway – just why did Jimmy Carter in 2002? And he continues –
“[s]o, why not use it to send a different signal alltogether? Why not use it to send the signal that the efforts Bush and Blair have made – against the high-pitched protests of the ‘world’ – were appreciated by at least some of us? Why not balance the usual message that talk solves everything with the often proved idea that force is a good second resort?”
Well, I would say that being appreciated by some implies that their policy has been rejected by many, which is usually not the way to win a world-wide competition. But Bjorn’s second argument is quite interesting, in my opinion. In general as well as, I think, in the case at hand.
Making peace sometimes does require violence. Even the staunchest opponents of last months war in Iraq accepted that – so yes, why not award a Nobel Peace Prce to someone who employed violence for the greater good of mankind? I have no objections to this in general. In fact, could such a case be made one day, I would happily support it. Why not give it to the international troops that forcefully ensure peace around Kabul, help the Afghan government trying to negotiate with the warlords out in the country and thus aid in ending a decade old civil war?
But as far as Iraq is concerned I am not at all with Bjorn. Certainly not for the time being. Should the project of a “Middle Eastern Pax Americana” turn out to foster modernizsation instead of ethnic conflict and religious fundamentalism in the region – and, yes, to a certain extent this also applies to the fundamentalist factions of the Israeli society – I would be willing to give the credit to those who pursued it, even though they had to trick their own people by exaggerating the risk posed by a specific regime, and even though they had been closely affiliated to private enterprises that benefit significantly from the military action they pursued.
But let’s face it: It is far too early to tell. Maybe in 15 years we will be able to tell if this war was not just one useful in geo-strategic terms, but also one worthy of a Nobel Peace Price.
Numbers you don’t need.
But which are pretty cool nonetheless – ‘this site is intended to allow science fiction fans to get an impression of the true scale of their favorite science fiction spacecraft by being able to campare ships accross genres, as well as being able to compare them with contemporary objects with which they are probably familiar.’ – Jeff Russell’s starship dimensions.
Haim or no Haim?
The American/Egyptian/Israeli media entrepreneur Haim Saban, who decided to take control of roughly 20% of the German tv-market – the majority of the main business of the bankcrupt former Kirchmedia empire – for roughly 2bn Euros is allegedly having second thoughts as other investors do not seem to share his enthusiasm for the deal. (from manager-magazin/Spiegel Online).
Conflicting Interests.
JD’s new media musings point to an interesting article regarding the consequences of digitalised production environments for the relationship of publishers and journalists in the LA Times –
“Convergence may be good for media companies, but it’s bad for journalism”.
I-loo.com
I rarely just quote things. But this time, there is really nothing to add to this item from the Guardian’s Informer newsletter…
“It’s not a joke,” a Microsoft spokesperson assured AFP. But it certainly sounds like one. According to Voila.fr [link in French], the software giant is launching the I-Loo – a portable toilet with an adjustable plasma screen, a wireless keyboard and an internet connection. It will, the site says, consign the piles of newspapers traditionally found in the corners of bathrooms to the bin.
“The internet is so much a part of everyday life that offering people the chance to surf in toilets is a natural step,” a marketing director told AFP. “It’s fascinating to think that the smallest room could be an way in to the enormous virtual world.”
Outdoor summer festivals such as Glastonbury will probably be the testing grounds for the invention. Whether the queues outside the notoriously smelly Portaloos will grow any longer remains to be seen.
Ode An Die Freude.
Brad DeLong always finds a new twist to inquire about the fundamentals of human civilisation – here’s what he writes today:
“By what right is Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony so damn good?
Why do we like it so much?”
The 4th movement was my first hit-single, believe it or not. And deaf Ludwig van B. was my first pop-star, when I was six (it never mattered that much that the words are actually Schiller’s). I even got the orchestral score as a Christmas present once – although I would not recommend trying to play it on solo-piano. It just doesn’t sound like it does in the Berlin philharmony, if you know what I mean.
I largeley quit classic music as a teenager, for obvious reasons. But one of the few pieces I voluntarily listened to (as opposed to being forced to listen to by well-meaning parents) even during that period was Beethoven’s ninth.
So why do “we” like it that much? Maybe because it is an ode to joy written by a man whose will was strong enough to cope with the hardest of all fates for a composer – deafness. Maybe because it reassures us that whatever seemingly insurmountable problem may appear one day, there is always hope. [author off to look for CD]
Galloway Follow Up. Today, the
Galloway Follow Up. Today, the Guardian reports that \”Labour yesterday suspended the controversial anti-war MP George Galloway, a move that may bar him in the autumn from winning the Labour nomination for its safest parliamentary seat in Glasgow.\”