Watching Al Jazeera

Watched Al Jazeera on the web today. After reading the new Thomas Friedman book, Longitudes and Attitudes, where he talks about Al Jazeera continually broadcasts scenes of Israeli depradations on the West Bank. Without any commentary. So I tuned into their webcast.

First, there was some kind of travel documentary. I couldn't figure out exactly where they were featuring, but I think it may have been New Zealand. Looked old -- probably a western flick with an Arabic overdub.

Then on to sports. Soccer leads. Then we move to track and field. Oh, it's the Asian games in Busan, South Korea. They spend a lot of time. Why? Don't they know the baseball playoffs are on? Oh. That's right, they're savages.

And there's another reason for their focus. Doha, Qatar will host the 2006 version of the Asian games. Al Jazeera is headquartered in Qatar.

Now we cut to one of those silent montages....

Headlines:

Over silence, we see:

• Scenes from Gaza(?)
• ambulance
• weeping friends/family
• body laid out on a bier
• atom bomb test? No bright puictures of warships
• Tanks rolling, scattered gunfire in distance
• Red cross truck
• Black(?) victim pulled out to hospital
• Black African soldiers with guns, bazookas, big gun mounted on the back of a
• pickup
• Scattered shooting. Seems tense but desultory
• Warship. Americans at the con. Blacks, whites
• Radar sets
• Night scene. Powerful flashlights on buildings
• Soldiers coming out of APC
• Americans interrogate prisoners.
• Afghanistan bank shipments. Boxes of new currency? Looks like.

Cut to promo -- selling the website!

All of this without a word spoken, though it has the date and some Arabic text on the bottom of the screen. Now a voiceover: "Ahl Jazeerah Doht Net"

The news!

• Pictures of the UN, Bush addressing Congress, US warships at sea. Then talk of Kuwait.
• Audio-only interview. Picture overlay shows some guy in a burnoose. Looks like a Saudi sheik. I can pick out "Sauuuudi" and "Iraq" and "Kuuuwayyt".
• Interview with someone, voiceover has picture. I can pick out "Osama been Laden" and "Mullah Omar" and "Iraq".
• Yet another audio interview. This guy is pictured in western dress. "Israeili."
• Next segment. More "Israeili" with "Palestinia" crowds marching, posturing for the cameras. Earthly-looking man talks. "HAHmas" Night scenes. Traffic. Talk with someone. More traffic.
• Video interview with "Waleed". Background looks vaguely Holy-landish. He too talks about "Palastinia" and "HAHmas". "Israhl" makes it in. Host says "Jeru". Is he in "occupied Jerusalem"? "ShahROHN" makes it in.
• Exchange rates! Market indexes. It's the finanacial segment. All graphic, no voiceover.
• Ooh la la! A babe. She's got a mauve blazer on and a pink, scoop-neck blouse. Raven tresses to her shoulders. She wouldn't be out of place on a US news set.
• Talking about a NY Times article about the attack on the Marines in Kuwait. They display a masthead, headline, and clip of the news story.
• Several more stories. All in Arabic.
• I tried several times to get a screenshot from Windows Media Player, but it didn't capture the video frame, only the parent window.
• Someone in a beret haranguing a crowd in Arabic(?) Picture so bright I can't tell who. Saddam? Cut to another audio interview with pundit(?), journalist(?). I keep hearing "Sudan". That must be it.
• "Congaress" in "Amerikee", Bush speaking, Powell speaking, exterior shots of Capitol Dome. Clips of the House debates with voiceover, translation of only small, anti-war Congresswoman's speech
• Cincinnati. A map showing where it is. Bush talking in background, night shots from the gulf war. More Bush. Second plane hits the tower. Capitol dome again. House interiors. Back to Bush. Graphic with bullet points of Bush's demands. Nice stern inset pic of the stern President. Aerial photographs. Standing O from the Cincinnati crowd.
• Saddam and Chirac(?) on the graphic. Iraqi flag and the tricolor. Debate in the French(?) Parliament. No, it's the UN. Probably the security council. No, it's France. Gesticulating MPs. Yes, it's from Paris.
• Weather. If those temps are in Farenheit, it's chilly. If in Celsius, it's damnably hot. 41 in some places! Yikes. Lots of sunshine too.
• OK. I'm done. Can't take it anymore.

I don't have a TV, so I don't watch much news, but if imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, our network news organizations should feel very flattered. If it weren't in Arabic and the presenters weren't quite so swarthy, I'd be hard-pressed to tell any difference.   

ColorMatch 5K

This utility will help you select a matching 6-color palette for your website.

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via Protocol7

  

An Iraqi Man of Letters. Iraq's best-selling novelist is also a poet who enjoys strumming the lute and is passionate about Hemingway. And if any book critic were rash enough to pan his novels, he would have the offender's tongue cut out and his entire family beaten to death. By Nicholas D. Kristof. [New York Times: Opinion]  

Perl.com: How hashes really work

It's easy to take hashes for granted in Perl. They are simple, fast, and they usually "just work," so people never need to know or care about how they are implemented. Sometimes, though, it's interesting and rewarding to look at familiar tools in a different light. This article follows the development of a simple hash class in Perl in an attempt to find out how hashes really work.

via QubeQuorner

Python is built almost entirely on dictionaries, which are hashes.  

USS Clueless: After Gulf War II

Seldom at a loss for words, Den Beste cranked out 7,000 words to respond to a 2,500 word story. I pasted the text into Word. It spans 12 pages. Single spaced.

You're not going to read this are you? Didn't think so. In the spirit of Slate's "series skipper" stories, I'll summarize some of Den Beste's most piercing points:

• We must weigh the risks of not acting against the consequences of action.
• Our impending invasion and takeover of Iraq is part of a broader war against Arab Traditionalsts, who (quoting Thomas Friedman) "hate us for who we are, not what we've done," and whose goal is to destroy our society.
• Arab culture respects power and its exercise.
• Iraq is strategically important, indeed too important to
• We are not acting unilaterally. We've enlisted the help of the UK, Turkey, Qatar, and Kuwait. We just haven't recieved the blessings of what he terms "the right nations (France[, Germany])."
• Germany is no longer strategically important, so they've essentially become irrelevant. So why do we need to keep two of our 12 Divisions there, pumping money into their economy?
• What if we were to move those troops to a country where they might be more useful, like our nascent ally, Iraq?
• Doing all these things will show the Arab world what truly bad mofos we really are, and give them a taste of what crossing us really looks like.
• The "Arab Street" responds to strength. You didn't see rioting when we attacked Afghanistan. The lesson will be all the more powerful when the vanquished is in their back yard.
• International cooperation does not rely on the UN or International Law. Treaties.
• This war will be expensive (Galston guesses $60 billion), but that's about what 9/11 will cost us, and if it deters another attack of the magnitude of 9/11 (or worse), it will be money well-spent.

I actually think that this is Bush's plan for improving the economy. Let's say that things go well: Den Beste thinks that there's every reason to believe that the vaunted Iraqi military -- most feared in the Arab world -- will collapse almost immediately once we commence operations. We will have spent several billion dollars and Saddam will have met with an unfortunate accident.

When the riotous celebrations in the streets of Bagdhad (and the unfortunate accidents that will befall some of the worst of the offenders), we'll impose some kind of martial law. We'll redeploy the troops that are currently guarding the less-than-crucial West German front into a more profitable (and I mean that in every sense of the word) theater of operations: Iraq.

The sanctions are off. Also off are the deals between Saddam and European oil companies to assist in modernizing Iraqi oil extraction methods. I suspect that some US companies will be willing to step in. In the meantime, the price of oil will plummet because we're going to open the taps on Iraqi wells up wide. They need to raise revenue to pay off the foreign debts we won't let them reneg on (like the several billion dollars they owe Russia).

The increase in supply will not be offset by reduced production by other countries. Saudi Arabia can't afford to lose revenues, especially with a bunch of US troops stationed just a few miles from its borders. Crude prices will fall to below $20, maybe even down to $15.

There's no jet fuel like cheap oil to jump-start an economy. Inflationary pressures will disappear and the Fed can reduce interest rates down to zero. I expect we'll be done with the ground war by March '03, that we'll have oil prices stabilized low by August '03, and that the economy will take off just in time to be riding high in late '04. If the Saudi regime lasts that long, Bush will have another foreign policy crisis to handle just before the election. They'll have another four years.

Part of me hopes I'm wrong about that last part!