....LMB: "Random War Thoughts"....

March 26, 2003

1) Of course, the first thought is: what a terrible fucking idea this war was.

2) Many pundits and armchair generals are already saying "there needs to be a change of tactics/this is a quagmire." But really, this is probably pretty average results for a military invasion. Just because it's not the cakewalk we were promised doesn't mean that this is Vietnam II (yet).

3) A local news station began tonight's broadcast saying "there is now proof that Iraq is hiding chemical weapons." They then went on to say that the military had taken control of a hospital which had 3000 chemical protection suits. That isn't proof of anything, you bastards.

4) When Aaron Brown and Wolf Blitzer are on the same CNN news segment, they subtly battle each other for airtime. It's funny.

5) What's up with Al Jazeera these days? Pre-Afghanistan, it was lauded for it's "get in every regime's face" style. Then it got bashed by the White House for it's non-pro-U.S. stance. Now it seems to be getting bashed by everyone. I don't watch AJ. Is this bashing justified, or is it propaganda? Is Al Jazeera a good network, did it used to be, did it change?

6) The Iraqis really don't seem to be buying into this "America as liberators" thing. Which is quite rational. A country's been starving and bombing you for ten years, then guys from that country with big guns walk into your village and say "we're here to rescue you"? I'm thinking that the U.S. will conquer Iraq, and then be attacked by Iraqis guerrilla-style for months and months afterwards, until the U.S. pulls out or until the resistance is massacred.

Posted by Jake at 01:35 AM | TrackBack (0)
Comments

i have read before that Al Jazeera is connected to the U.S. either funded or somehow linked.

Posted by: quang at March 26, 2003 04:19 AM

Did you catch the brief history of Iraq on 'Sunday Morning'? It described the past century of Iraqi history and made me realize that this is once again the white western assholes sewing up a patchwork of nations into a state for their own economic convenience. We all believe in self-governance and self-determination until it means we can't have our petrol. You are totally on about the resistance. A historian on the tube said it best: 'Iraq is three nations that have been forced to become one state.' I know it will never happen - but wouldn't it be great if Americans were able to steward a restoration of Iraq to it's pre-British Colony days... where the Kurds, the Sunnis and the Shiites have their own lands. America has the uncanny ability to ignore the centuries of tribal politics that eclipse anything in the past few decades. And I have yet to talk to anyone that is 100% for the war. It just boggles my mind that if no one is totally gung-ho about the war - without reservations - then why the fuck are we doing it? And to see the Bush Administration cry foul as Iraq violates the Geneva Convention that we've been using as an asswipe for years now. Argh... keep up the good work - love your blog!

Posted by: Andy at March 26, 2003 05:26 AM

you know... i'm pretty sick of hearing about what "savages" those iraqis are for airing footage of our POWS and casualties. We air footage of captured "unlawful combatants" (Read: "we-don't-have-to-treat-them-with-any-minimum-standard-of-decency"), we show dead iraqi bodies lying in the sand... what's the difference? it's all revolting. and i just love how everyone's whining now about how hard this war is getting - like, did you actually not expect people to die?

Posted by: Holly at March 26, 2003 06:32 AM
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Media News

November 16, 2004

Tales of Media Woe

Senate May Ram Copyright Bill- one of the most depressing stories of the day that didn't involve death or bombs. It's the music and movie industries' wet dream. It criminalizes peer-to-peer software makers, allows the government to file civil lawsuits on behalf of these media industries, and eliminates fair use. Fair use is the idea that I can use a snippet of a copyrighted work for educational, political, or satirical purposes, without getting permission from the copyright-holder first.

And most tellingly, the bill legalizes technology that would automatically skip over "obejctionable content" (i.e. sex and violence) in a DVD, but bans devices that would automatically skip over commericals. This is a blatant, blatant, blatant gift to the movie industry. Fuck the movie industry, fuck the music industry, fuck the Senate.

Music industry aims to send in radio cops- the recording industry says that you're not allowed to record songs off the radio, be it real radio or internet radio. And now they're working on preventing you from recording songs off internet radio through a mixture of law and technological repression (although I imagine their techno-fixes will get hacked pretty quickly).

The shocking truth about the FCC: Censorship by the tyranny of the few- blogger Jeff Jarvis discovers that the recent $1.2 million FCC fine against a sex scene in Fox's "Married By America" TV show was not levied because hundreds of people wrote the FCC and complained. It was not because 159 people wrote in and complained (which is the FCC's current rationale). No, thanks to Jarvis' FOIA request, we find that only 23 people (of the show's several million viewers) wrote in and complained. On top of that, he finds that 21 of those letters were just copy-and-paste email jobs that some people attached their names to. Jarvis then spins this a bit by saying that "only 3" people actually wrote letters to the FCC, which is misleading but technically true. So somewhere between 3 and 23 angry people can determine what you can't see on television. Good to know.

Reuters Union Considers Striking Over Layoffs- will a strike by such a major newswire service impact the rest of the world's media?

Pentagon Starts Work On War Internet- the US military is talking about the creation of a global, wireless, satellite-aided computer network for use in battle. I think I saw a movie about this once...

Conservative host returns to the air after week suspension for using racial slur- Houston radio talk show host (and somtime Rush Limbaugh substitute) Mark Belling referred to Mexican-Americans as "wetbacks" on his show. He was suspended for a couple of weeks, and then submitted a written apology for the racial slur to a local newspaper. But he seems to be using the slur and its surrounding controversy to boost his conservative cred with his listeners.

Stay Tuned for Nudes- Cleveland TV news anchor Sharon Reed aired a story about artist Spencer Tunick, who uses large numbers of naked volunteers in his installations and photographs. The news report will be unique in that it will not blur or black-out the usual naughty bits. The story will air late at night, when it's allegedly okay with the FCC if you broadcast "indecent" material. The author of this article doesn't seem to notice that Reed first claims that this report is a publicity stunt, but then claims it's a protest against FCC repression. I'd like to think it's the latter, but I'm not that much of a sucker.

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Jake's first attempt at homemade Mongolican barbecue:

Failure.

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