Edgewise

Guardian on bloggers and Rachel Corrie's reputation.

The Guardian looks closely at how bloggers covered the aftermath of the Rachel Corrie story, finding an unsavory pile-on in the echo chamber. Cointelpro Tool takes on this line of reasoning and finds that it echoes the Indymedia line.

Rumsfeld denies reports he ignored advice

According to this CNN story:

Rumsfeld on Sunday dismissed "hyperventilating" critics of the war in Iraq and called reports that he vetoed plans by top officers for a larger invasion force "fiction."

It's Dave Winer's world... we just live in it.

Gary Hart has a blog. Let's see if he can keep it up through a grueling campaign. A presidential blog would be cool but somehow I don't see it.

Talking Points Memo taking flak

For an analysis of the growing scandal around Rumsfeld and other politicos ignoring the best advice of the military brass and needlessly exposing our servicemen to greater risk than necessary, Joshua Marshall's Talking Point Memo has been invaluable. Depite the fact that his sources are sound and his explanations cogent, he is now being subjected to a campaign of oppobrium from readers who believe he is trying to undermine the U.S. and give aid and comfort to Saddam. Is the truth really that dangerous?

The emperor's new subcontract

I know this war can't be about control of oil, and we're supposed to look past Dick Cheney's revolving-door history from first gulf war to Halliburton, where his contacts in the gulf came in somewhat handy, back into the government in time fo rthe next gulf war and hey, look, if it isn't ol' Halliburton subsidiary Kellogg Brown & Root (cf. LBJ's long history with Brown & Root as depicted in Robert Caro's biographical series) rushing into Iraq to help put out them oil fires, fresh off the deals to build prison cells down in Gitmo.

For the ooooooil minded, here's the shorter yesterday's New York Times (login mediajunkie, password mediajunkie):

Bush, Pleased by Progress, Tries to Lower Expectations
"Tommy Franks put a plan in place that moved on those oil fields quickly, and at least in the south, they are secure," Mr. Bush said.

But nobody seems to mind Richard Perle's side-deals, so I guess the appearance that Cheney engages in influence-peddling will pass from the headlines with no visible consequences.

American casualties

CNN is maintaining a page listing all available information about U.S. casualties in the ongoing Iraq war.

Circular dialogue on war in Iraq

A little late in the game, I find a link to Cronus Connections' A Warmonger Educates a Peacenik. Will Instapundit be linking to this (or has he already)? I wonder.

An excerpt:

Peacenik: Why are we invading Iraq?
Warmonger: For the last time, we are invading Iraq because the world has called on Saddam Hussein to disarm, and he has failed to do so. He must now face the consequences.
Peacenik: So, likewise, if the world called on us to do something, such as find a peaceful solution, we would have an obligation to listen?
Warmonger: By "world", I meant the United Nations.
Peacenik: So, we have an obligation to listen to the United Nations?
Warmonger: By "United Nations" I meant the Security Council.
Peacenik: So, we have an obligation to listen to the Security Council?
Warmonger: I meant the majority of the Security Council.
Peacenik: So, we have an obligation to listen to the majority of the Security Council?
Warmonger: Well... there could be an unreasonable veto.
Peacenik: In which case?
Warmonger: In which case, we have an obligation to ignore the veto.
Peacenik: And if the majority of the Security Council does not support us at all?
Warmonger: Then we have an obligation to ignore the Security Council.

Standing on the verge of... ?

Another e-mail tip leads to this graffito response to a "United We Stand" decal.

The other numbers

Someone sent me a link to Iraq Body Count, which estimates only 16 civilian deaths so far.

The veil of invisibility

So we're walking back to the car parked along the frontage road when a coworker says, "there's an Amber alert on the freeway" and I look up to read the lit up message on the huge billboard "....brown Datsun 200sx..." and the license plate number that harbors a fugitive kidnapper and abducted girl (probably).

And I think about that fourteen year old in Salt Lake City who was hidden in plain sight for 8 months in her home town, in local restaurants, at street fairs, all around the neighborhood in fact unseen by people who were looking at posters alerting them to her abduction in the same room where she was standing but not seeing her because "she was veiled."

She was encased in white robes, only her eyes showing. Her captor-mother was also veiled. And all those hundreds of people not really able to speak out (or not wanting to) and say "why are those women being hidden?" Why are you making them invisible?

When we accept in our open and democratic society the normalcy of veiled women, women hidden from public view, prevented from speaking, not allowed to have faces, or voices, or--let me be perfectly clear--not allowed to exist in their own right, then we have abandoned them. If we do not see the veiled girls and women we have lost them even as they walk among us.

Can't anybody here play this game?

First they laughed Fleischer out of the room, then this petty payback against Helen Thomas, and now the stilted, scripted case-for-war, sorta, press conference is under scrutiny, according to this Kuro5hin thread, Ari Fleischer admits Bush called from a prepared list of reporters thread.

Insert "bush league" crack here.

Vive La France

A Chronicle article from January 24 circulating among my environmentalist brethren and sistren (Taking on 'Rational Man') discusses the politics of academic economics, and the animosity between neoclassical economists and dissidents. While professors in the U.S. are being marginalized in subsidiary theoretical programs, French grad students have taken the lead in the rebellion:

The dissidents take heart from events in France. In 2000, an online graduate-student petition proclaimed that neoclassical economics, or at least its unbridled application in teaching and research, dwelt in unreality to the point of being "autistic."

The students dubbed their movement "Post-Autistic Economics" and quickly provoked a national debate of the French variety. Some leading publications and high-profile economists hailed the protesters, who, in petitions-cum-manifestoes, denounced economics as a morass of "imaginary worlds" that was mired in "pathological," pseudoscientific mathematics; that was aggressively excluding pluralism; and that was, even so, barely able to explain "l'économie de Robinson Crusoe."

Shorter Chomsky Thrash

Dismayed at D-squared's removal of his Shorten Den Beste post that finally provoked a response from the man's reader-fans, The Poor Man offered a series of amusing Shorters, nailing himself in the process. The Chomsky one ("Shorter Noam Chomsky: Whatever someone said recently is pretty rich, considering East Timor"), which I thought was one of the funnier, drier ones, yielded the inevitable thrash in the comments area.

If e-mail weren't private, I'd love to hear more of Northrup's "weird e-mail" exchange with Den Beste.

Uncle Osama wants you

Too much work, constant deadlines, and a general disgust with the state of geopolitics has made me reduce my reading of the media to a bare minimum. It's too easy to get stressed out and crazy from the barrage of propaganda, lies, and distorted truths in the mediasphere. Blogs are no better, in general, but I still find myself drawn back to Orcinus regularly. In a post about the legislator's who walked out to protest a prayer by a Muslim cleric, Neiwert articulates something he calles "The Orcinus Principium":

Those who foment war against Islam are objectively furthering the agenda of Osama bin Laden, and are thus an effective Al Qaeda 'fifth column.'