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Friday, March 21, 2003 |
Playing with Saddam's mind. An expert in psychological operations sees the U.S. engaged in an elaborate effort to collapse the will of the Iraqi regime. And the media are a tool. [Salon.com]
11:58:27 PM 
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Editors' Newswire for 21 March, 2003. Newswire stories, including: SOAPpy 0.9.8, SOAP and WSDL for Python; XML Professional Publisher (XPP) adds a Web Services Development Kit; swan, simple Java library for XML output; Java Web Services Developer Pack (JWSDP) 1.1 adds JAXB 1.0 implementation; xmlLinguist 1.0, a text-to-XML translator specialized for B2B formats. [xmlhack]
10:56:28 PM
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New RSS file location [Werblog]
7:31:54 PM
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The 2003 edition of Macworld was a big hit. If you haven't seen the show, you can still catch the QuickTime 6 stream here. There were a ton of new introductions including something special for the UNIX community - X11 for Mac OS X. Check out the press release, but more importantly, give the beta a try. We've been blown away by the reception so far. There have been more than 100,000 downloads in less than two weeks. Wow!
X11 for Mac OS X is a version of the X Window System based on the XFree86 (the de-facto standard) source base that has been seamlessly integrated with Mac OS X's Aqua user interface, Quartz Extreme and OpenGL technologies. High performance, graphically rich UNIX and Linux apps are now a small step away from running on Mac OS X. |
[Ken Bereskin's Radio Weblog]
7:14:05 PM
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Death of a dreamer. In her green hometown, far from the squalid road in Gaza where she was crushed by an Israeli bulldozer, the young activist is remembered as an idealist who loved life. [Salon.com]
6:15:20 PM
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 Scary interview on CNN by Paula Zahn with Tom Daschle, Senate Minority Leader. They played Daschle's speech prior to the war, where he said it was a failure of diplomacy that forced the war. Playing the speech now was unfair. As the NY Times editorial said, that was the time to ask how we got into this mess. Now that the war is on, Daschle has made a joint statement with Senate Majority leader Bill Frist supporting US and allied troops in Iraq. Then Zahn asked if Daschle could see how some would have seen his statement as unpatriotic. What an outrage. Zahn is a reporter, interviewing a distinguished member of the US Senate. She pressed him. If I were he, I would have gotten up and left the interview. Listen up. War is not an excuse to turn off your minds. We need our minds more than ever. Reporters don't lecture leaders. They report. Daschle voiced a concern that many Americans have, at an appopriate time. Once the war is under way, he and we are commited, like it or not.  [Scripting News]
4:25:24 PM
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War Worms Inch Across Internet. Computer virus writers and petty hackers are hard at work circulating e-mail worms and defacing websites to make statements for and against the war in Iraq. The offending attachments lure recipients by claiming to contain news of the conflict. By Michelle Delio. [Wired News]
4:06:36 PM
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Justice Scalia says rights excessive, can be scaled down in wartime. U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia had this to say on Tuesday: "The Constitution just sets minimums ... Most of the rights that you enjoy go way beyond what the Constitution requires." According to Scalia, during wartime, "the protections will be ratcheted right down to the constitutional minimum." [kuro5hin.org]
3:55:31 PM
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Navy Launches 320 Tomahawks at Iraq. The U.S. Navy launched about 320 Tomahawk cruise missiles on Iraq from ships in the Persian Gulf and the Red Sea, senior officers said Friday. "We have just begun the next phase of attacks in Iraq," said Rear Adm. Matthew G. Moffit, commander of the aircraft carrier USS Kitty Hawk battle group in the north Persian Gulf. [Associated Press war headlines via GoUpstate.com]
2:59:15 PM
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Hayao Miyazaki, the master of animation. Among Hayao Miyazaki's masterpieces are Nausicaa of the Valley of Wind, Princess Mononoke, and, most recently, Spirited Away. With the April 15 US release of Spirited Away, Kiki's Delivery Service, and Laputa: Castle in the Sky, an Academy nomination for Spirited Away, and Disney's commitment to release re-dubbed, re-mastered versions of Miyazaki's films in the US and worldwide, the American public is getting more acquainted with this legend of animation. Miyazaki's films are not your regular anime [more inside...] [MetaFilter]
2:57:12 PM
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Books For Soldiers. Books For Soldiers If you don't know what to do with your old Clan of the Cave Bear paperbacks or want to take the boredom out of post-war deployment for those in uniform, send the soldiers a book! Soldiers can request a book or you can post the military address of a loved one and people send them their requests. I wonder if my selection would be well received? [MetaFilter] (I have some copies of the "Bhagavad Gita," and numerous books on the Geneva Conventions, UN Charter, and International Humanitarian Law that would help them fall asleep at night.)
2:53:09 PM
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War-blogging worth reading. I've been staying away from blogging about the war for the most part. I hate the yammering talk-radio thrashes that follow every post, and I feel like there's not much I can point to that a) most people haven't seen already and/or b) I have something new to say about. But Patrick Nielsen Hayden, my editor at Tor, has been blogging a really amazing collection of reasoned, sometimes contrary, thoughtful and thorough blog-entries about the war that have made me think hard and have alternately heartened and depressed me. Link Discuss [Boing Boing Blog]
12:54:58 PM
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Cisco acquires Linksys for $500M: This acquisition is a clear win for Cisco, which can sell up and down the horizontal chain to consumers (which they've never really sold to directly, only through partners like DSL providers), small businesses, and their traditional enterprise market. [80211b News]
12:46:55 PM
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A cry for jihad. The White House says that a war with Iraq has nothing to do with Islam, but imams all over the world are calling for a holy war. [Salon.com]
12:37:49 PM
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A commander's words to his men. There is a long tradition of military commanders giving final words of encouragement to their troops before battle. Below is a speech given by Lieutenant Colonel Tim Collins to the 1st Battalion of the Royal Irish Regiment. It seems somewhat ironic to me that our military leaders appear to be more eloquent, and have a better understanding of the meaning of what they are doing, than the politicians who instruct them in our name. [kuro5hin.org]
12:13:05 PM
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US and Gassing Iraqis. Military use of Gas
Top US military planners are preparing for the US to use incapacitating biochemical weapons in an invasion of Iraq. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and Gen. Richard Myers, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, revealed the plans in February 5th testimony before the US House Armed Services Committee. This is the first official US acknowledgement that it may use (bio)chemical weapons in its crusade to rid other countries of such weapons.
Would someone explain to me again why we're attacking Iraq? Was it something about use and/or possession of chemical weapons? [MetaFilter]
12:10:13 PM
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Advance review of Wallace and Grommit game. Here's an advance review of the upcoming Wallace and Grommit game, which will be released to tie in with the 2005 movie.
 The game begins from a premise that's arrant nonsense even for a licensed platformer -- an evil penguin, Feathers McGraw, has taken over the zoo that's imprisoned him and enslaved its inhabitants as part of his jewel-smuggling operation. Wallace and Gromit (mostly Gromit, who the player controls throughout the game) have to free 24 levels worth of imprisoned baby animals in order to free the zoo from the penguin's domination and return him to the appropriate occupation of a zoo penguin, slipping around on his belly and eating herring and guest-starring in Ed Norton's psychotic fantasies.
Link Discuss (via /.) [Boing Boing Blog]
12:05:07 PM
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Glenn Fleishman: "A plan to give away Real World Adobe GoLive 6 as a free PDF might cost me $5,000 to $15,000 in bandwidth charges because of, well, too much interest in the book." [Scripting News]
11:57:01 AM
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Detached from reality. Comment: The pain and horror of war can never be conveyed by coverage of the conflict in Iraq, says Anas Altikriti of the Muslim Association of Great Britain. [Guardian Unlimited]
9:00:00 AM
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Blogologue.
Mike Sanders poses some tough questions for peacebloggers.
My brief reply...
As long as we believe the lesser evil of war is the only way to eliminate the greater evil of oppression, genocide, mass cruelty and threats of mass destruction, we will continue to have all those things.
I also believe the world has made enormous moral progress since World War II. Much as I dislike the current war, I must acknowledge the important differences between its intentions and methods and those during earlier wars. This is a war that seeks not just to disarm a threatening regime, but to release the people of that nation from its regime's opression.
Sixty years ago we might have said "Surrender or lose Baghdad." Civilized countries don't do that anymore. I count this as progress. I don't count as progress the willingness of my country to wage this war without the full backing of the United Nations. I am also saddened by the almost complete lack of debate in our own Congress over this war. Before the last Gulf War, the debate was intense and eloquent. That war was demontrably a result of a far more democratic process than this one.
Lewis Mumford found in war the persistent urge to human sacrifice. He also said "the balance of mechanized power seems to have fallen on the side of destruction". I believe both statements shed unwelcome light on my country's obsession with military technology and world domination, however benevolent our intentions may be.
I also believe this obsession will appear increasingly sick and anachonistic, regardless of whatever relative evil it reduces, as civilization matures. [The Doc Searls Weblog]
8:51:50 AM
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Peace coverage.
Radio stuff:
KCRW in Los Angeles has suspended much of its normal programming to air rolling coverage not just from NPR, but also from BBC and CNN. I can get them over the air here (from one of their secondary transmitters), but they also stream live in several formats on the Web.
WUNC in Chapel Hill is doing the same. Also KUOW in Seattle.
Unrelated: It annoys me that KPCC doesn't webcast. Their signal is a whopping 600 watts. Compare that with KPFK's 110,000 watts, from roughly the same location. Even though they're up on Mt. Wilson, their signal is stopped by a shingle, meaning this map far overstates the real-world case. And unlike KCRW and KPFK, they don't have translator or satellite (repeater) stations. But they're a good station. If they'd webcast, I'd send them money.
By the way, KPFK and other Pacifica stations can be heard live via links here. Pacifica's coverage was highly important during the Vietnam war. Not so sure about this war, but if you're looking for a Left edge angle on things, Pacifica is a good place to start.
TV (or not) stuff:
Rick Ellis of All Your TV ("Covering the Networks Who Cover the War") has launched The Loyal Opposition ("the Official Program Guide For a Liberal TV Talk Show that Isn't on the Air"). The latter is a blog. So is Rick on TV. He tells me more is planned. Stay tuned.
The rest of it:
Kevin Marks points to UK sources of opinion.
RageBoy on art, life, the Equinox and more.
AlterNet. Thanks to Derek Powazek (an AlterNet contributor) for the pointer. Here's Derek on San Francisco:
I love San Francisco. I really do. I love San Francisco because we're a little wacky. A lot different. But there are times when I'm sad for my city.
For example, when my fellow citizens put red food dye in milk, drink it, and then go to the financial district and vomit on the steps of buildings where ordinary people are trying to go to work, that makes me sad.
And yes, oh yes, they are feeding the capitalist machine, those people. I know. I went to college, too. But we're not talking about the capitalist machine today, class. We're talking about one moron head of state dropping bombs on another moron head of state because he can. Preemptively.
Like Derek, Tony celebrates The City:
bad americans keep their mouths shut. bad americans let their presidents break the law, bypass the constitution, the un, and common sense for their own agendas.
good americans raise their fists next to the two-gallon mayonaise and excersize their freedom of speech.
bad americans send teens to a desert to kill at will.
frisco you epitomized today what makes this nation great and i will never forget you for it.
i dont care that your streets smell of piss, i dont care how much it costs to cross the golden gate bridge, i dont care that most of my friends couldnt afford to live there any more.
i care that on any given day you are the most enlightened city on the globe, and today you validated what everyone already knew.
thank you.
and thank you for letting the cubs have dusty baker.
Pacific News Service.
Moxie is back, as MoxiePundit:
...while I am pro-war, I think our military has it all wrong. Think Baywatch meets the 101st Airborne Division.
If you want to collapse Saddam's regime....send in the dancers from Spearmint Rhino, naked Playboy Bunnies and female porn stars. That alone would give the phrase "Patriot Missiles" a whole new meaning. [The Doc Searls Weblog]
8:42:27 AM
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© Copyright 2003 Bernie Dunham.
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