August 31, 2003
Starting
Well those JPEGs didnt turn out well, Im not sure what happened. Anyways I start at the New Statesman in the morning. Looking forward to it, and to working in London.
I do apologise for the lack of blogging. I have been so busy working, going to Paris and getting ready to start at the NS that things got on top of me and I couldnt get time to blog. I will make up for it!
August 29, 2003
Versailles
Taken with a Nokia 7210 + Nokia camera and sent via MMS/GPRS
August 28, 2003
Paris return
I have returned from a pleasant stay in Paris. I thorougly enjoyed it. Will post pics of Versailles later.
August 23, 2003
Radio show
Dick has blogged on our being interviewed on Dublin's NewsTalk 106 yesterday. I thought he was much more articulate than my mumblings but I was *at least* as nervous as he. I shall have to work on my speech. The debate was interesting though and it was good to hear the subject getting an airing. I think Hugh Linehan, the presenter, seemed slightly bewildered by the idea but positive about aspects of it.
Thanks too to Karlin, she tipped the researcher off about me. Hope you have a good weekend Karlin. :-)
I will blog on the discussion more after I return from Paris (dirty weekend)
August 22, 2003
Chief justice defiant on monument
Picked up this story from Technorati. It seems that religious fundamentalism is alive and well in Alabama.
Chief Justice of Alabama Roy Moore is ignoring a Supreme Court ruling that a religious monument inside a judicial building in Montgomery should be removed.
The Supreme Court ruled that the monument portraying the 10 Commandments be moved out of a public viewing area.
Moore's response?
He accused U.S. District Judge Myron Thompson, who had ordered the monument to be removed, of placing himself “above the law and above God.”
Former Republican presidential candidate Alan Keyes then delivered a fiery speech, saying the efforts of courts and government to stifle religion must end.
“This must end, or freedom will end with it,” Keyes said. “No longer can we tolerate this crime that is being done against our movement for almighty God.”
I can see the courts point, separation of Church and State is important, epecially to the US Constitution. I think the expression of religious sentiment is fine, but on a stone monument in a government, no less a judicial, building?
The Washington Post also has the story here.
Fair and Balanced Friday
Some of you may have noticed that my sub-heading has changed to 'Fair and Balanced'. A proverbial two fingers to Mr. Murdoch.
Dan Gillmor of the San Jose Mercury does a good job of covering the story. Author Al Franken is being taken to court by Fox for use of the phrase 'Fair and Balanced' in his new book. As Dan rightly notes:
Since Fox is neither fair nor balanced, the notion that these people could have won a trademark on the expression -- which they did -- is mostly testament to the continuing incompetence at the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office. But Fox's lawsuit is entirely testament to the arrogance of Murdoch's minions and the growing idiocy of the legal system.
So the phrase 'Fair and Balanced' is being claimed as Fox property. The Star Tribune has the story here.
Have a fair and balanced Friday.
Holidays
My British long weekend shall be spent in Paris. I will return on August 26th. I may blog from an Internet Cafe in Paris, and post some photographs if I can.
Enjoy your weekend!
August 21, 2003
Drinking
Dick over at Back Seat Drivers has brought up the alcohol debate over the last few days. The topic has also featured on Samizdata
I wrote an article (June 23) for the New Statesman back in June on the subject so I think I will publish the entire unedited version here.
I have a fairly extensive amount of work done on the subject, and a number of links that are worth following.
A week following my article in the New Statesman there was a feature on Newsnight covering the self-same issue, myself and Liz MacKean largely agreed on the subject, after communicating briefly by email. After her report Paxo took on Richard Caborn in an hilarious interview - very well worth reading. Most notable:
CABORN:
Jeremy, when you're walking in Derbyshire and you can't get a drink at 4pm in the afternoon, because of the licensing laws, you get a little annoyed.
PAXMAN:
So we're doing it to placate French and German tourists and walkers in Derbyshire?
It is a somewhat uncontroversial feature on drinking in Ireland, but let me know what you think. Incidentally I worked as a barman, senior barman and head barman in Cork and Dublin for about 4 years.
In vino veritas the saying goes, and when applied to the Irish there is a veritable ocean of truth. The Irish are perhaps a people more associated with alcohol than any other nation and their fondness for drink has been the butt of countless jokes.
Advertisements for visiting Ireland almost always figure a pint or two as part of the campaign. A country with such a reputation, one might expect, would have the most liberal of laws for the consumption of alcohol. Not so, and it seems that the laws are about to become more draconian.
Ireland has a love-hate relationship with alcohol. On the one hand Irish people are known for their joviality, the pub culture is unlike any other—being the centre of Irish social life. Depending on the report you read, Ireland is one of the biggest consumers of alcohol per capita in Europe, and according to a 1996 WTO report, the second highest consumer of beer in the world.
On the other hand, alcohol related assaults have increased exponentially in recent years and up to 25% of cases in Accident and Emergency wards in Ireland are alcohol related. The Irish President, Mary McAleese, recently went as far as to say that Irish people have an ‘unhealthy’ and ‘sinister’ attitude to drink. In 2000 there were almost 15,000 reported cases of intoxication in a public place and a similar number of cases of abusive or insulting behaviour.
In an attempt to stem the huge growth of these offences the government updated the existing legislation, the Intoxicating Liquor Act, in 2000. Believing that by extending opening hours and liberalising the drinking regime Irish people would respond by moderating their alcohol consumption, the government underestimated how ingrained in Irish culture alcohol is.
The situation has since worsened, with alcohol consumption increasing yet more and incidences of violent behaviour growing. In response to the spiralling problem the government established a Commission to look into the problem, taking submissions from all sectors related to the drinks industry.
Released recently, the final report of the Commission on Liquor Licensing has made a number of recommendations that the government intends to implement. In order to combat endemic underage drinking the government is proposing that every person under the age of 21 be required to hold proof of age on licensed premises and that those under 15 be banned from pubs after 8pm.
The legal age of consumption shall remain at 18, but by making ID mandatory above that age to 21 the government believes it can cut down on those drinking who might look older than they actually are.
The government has also decided to back-pedal on laws introduced in 2000 whereby premises could remain open on Thursday nights until 12.30am, it will now be reverted to 11.30pm. It is believed alcohol abuse costs the Irish economy up to €2 billion in lost productivity, due in part the government believe, to people drinking on those late Thursday nights.
But some of the more controversial aspects of the proposals have caused widespread anger from the publicans lobby group, the Vintners Federation of Ireland. These plans include allowing plain-clothes police onto premises in order to enforce drinks legislation.
It is illegal for publicans to serve people that are ‘drunk’, but the law has been all but unenforceable. Previously small fines could be levied, but now the Irish Minister for Justice, Michael McDowell, believes that pubs should “face closure if they serve drink to the point where they are turning people out on the street plastered.”
But how does a publican define when a person is ‘drunk’? As one publican from Co. Wexford noted on Irish radio “At what point does the person who gets quietly plastered and ‘out of their tree’, at what point do you hold them responsible?”
Another controversial measure is that police may start using video cameras to record people leaving premises to be used as evidence if they are, in fact, drunk. A bit extreme one might say, but where 40% of fatal road accidents are drink related and an average of 25 alcohol related assaults occur every night, the government believes that enforcement is the solution.
Many do not agree. They believe a sea-change is required in the mentality of Irish people with regard to, as Irish people put it, the ‘demon drink’. Education from an early age is the solution, with a view to adopting a more mature, Mediterranean view of alcohol.
Green party MEP Patricia McKenna noted “In Mediterranean countries young people actually have access to alcohol from a very early age. In the European Parliament I never see Mediterraneans' sloshed and out of their minds, unfortunately, closer to home, I do see it.”
It is also believed that an outright ban on alcohol advertising is in order. Currently some Gaelic games are heavily promoted by the drinks industry, and while there is a voluntary ban on the national television station, the fact remains that drinking is heavily promoted through other media.
If the Irish government could strike a balance between a national alcohol strategy, and proper enforcement of current legislation then perhaps in the future we would see a more mature attitude in Ireland towards alcohol consumption.
Unfortunately the effects of any such strategy could take up to a generation to show results, and few governments will commit to such a long-term strategy. It is a difficult cultural trait to overcome, but with time we may see an Ireland not so keen to find answers to its problems at the bottom of a glass.
August 19, 2003
Cable problems
Apologies to readers, my cable connection has been intermittent in the last few days due to NTL problems with its DNS clusters. The problem should be fixed shortly. In the meantime I would direct you to the blogs in my daily reads section.
In other news I finally met fellow blogger Roger Ridey at the offices of the New Statesman last week in London. No time for pints this time Roger, but I'm sure we will try and make up for lost time.
Incidentally I will be an intern at the New Statesman for the month of September. I look forward to letting my readers know all the ins and outs of the lively media industry in London.
Will report back on Cable connections once it has been reestablished.
(Blogged from an Espresso House)
August 15, 2003
Webloggers deal Harvard blog-bores a black eye
Winer is real. Winer is a software developer, but one very few software developers people have heard of: he developed "outlining" software for the Macintosh in the 1980s and claims co-authorship of a couple of obscure web protocols, which are too boring and unimportant to mention. Rightly or wrongly, he has a reputation for alienating people. Now let's see what the cheeky monkey has been up to.
But on what grounds does Dave Winer, backed up by a small circuit of adoring journalists and fellow webloggers, have to uphold his right to fleece them for real bucks? (Sometimes the journalists are weblog evangelists and HTML coders themselves, which raises all kinds of tantalising conflict-of-interest questions we shall return to in due course).
Orlowski seems to be going past all kinds of reasonable journalism in his latest waffle about Blogging and Dave Winer.
Giant laser transmutes nuclear waste
A giant laser has cut the lifetime of a speck of radioactive waste from millions of years to just minutes. The feat raises hopes that a solution to nuclear power's biggest drawback - its waste - might one day be possible.
Gosh if this could be implemented it go towards creating an infinite supply of energy. Why didnt this story get more coverage?
"It is not going to solve the waste problem completely, but it reduces toxicity by a factor of 100. That's an attractive proposition," says Ken Ledingham, at the University of Strathclyde in Glasgow, who led the British and German research team.
Maureen Dowd: The candidate blogs? It's all over the Internet
Maureen Dowd has something interesting things to say about blogging. Thanks to 'Pett'? for pointing this out to me during the week too.
Even former candidates are weighing in. Gary Hart, who began his blog in March, doesn't bother to read other digital diarists. "If you're James Joyce," he said slyly, "you don't read other authors."
I think political weblogs will become must reads for netizens and citizens alike.
August 14, 2003
Niagara Mohawk
Niagara Mohawk, a National Grid USA company, provides electric service to approximately 1.5 million customers and natural gas to approximately 540,000 customers in upstate New York. The company is based in Syracuse. Its parent company also has electricity distribution operations in New England. National Grid USA's core business is the transmission and distribution of electricity. The company also has subsidiaries engaged in natural gas distribution; constructing and leasing of telecommunications infrastructure; and energy-related consulting. National Grid USA is a subsidiary of National Grid Transco, an international, U.K.-based energy delivery business with principal activities in the regulated electric and gas industries.
Bloggin
Sorry folks, been up the walls busy of late...will be back blogging later tonight.
August 10, 2003
Paul Krugman: The lesson buried in Iraq's desert sands
Paul Krugman believes we need to learn from the lessons of past civilizations and care for our environment.
The point is that when it comes to evidence of danger from emissions - as opposed to, say, Iraqi nukes - the people now running the United States won't take yes for an answer.
Quite.
August 09, 2003
blanket immunity for US corporations in Iraq
Holy Crap, how did I miss this story. Thanks Horst. Read this carefully.
"According to the order, 'any attachment, judgment, decree, lien, execution, garnishment or other judicial process is prohibited, and shall be deemed null and void, with respect to the following:
(a) the Development Fund for Iraq and
(b) all Iraqi petroleum and petroleum products, and interests therein, and proceeds, obligations or any financial instruments of any nature whatsoever arising from or related to the sale or marketing thereof, and interests therein, in which any foreign country or a national thereof has any interest, that are in the United States, that hereafter come within the United States, or that are or hereafter come within the possession or control of United States persons.'
The order defines 'persons' to include corporations, and covers 'any petroleum, petroleum products or natural gas originating in Iraq, including any Iraqi-origin oil inventories, wherever located.'"
"The Iraqi resolution halted the immunity to the point of sale. Once the oil is sold, the revenues are there for the development fund's Coffers. Bush went further, he went through the whole lifetime of that oil, once the title passes hands, it's still immune, as long as it's handled by U.S. corporations. So once it's on a tanker, once in the U.S. marketplace, once it's at the gas pump, it's still immune from any kind of accountability for anything that happens associated with the handling of that oil."
The story appears to originate from an LA Times article by Lisa Girion. She notes:
An executive order signed by President Bush more than two months ago is raising concerns that U.S. oil companies may have been handed blanket immunity from lawsuits and criminal prosecution in connection with the sale of Iraqi oil.
The Bush administration said Wednesday that the immunity wouldn't be nearly so broad.
But lawyers for various advocacy organizations said the two-page executive order seemed to completely shield oil companies from liability — even if it could be proved that they had committed human rights violations, bribed officials or caused great environmental damage in the course of their Iraqi-related business.
"As written, the executive order appears to cancel the rule of law for the oil industry or anyone else who gets possession or control of Iraqi oil or anything of value related to Iraqi oil," said Tom Devine, legal director for the Washington-based Government Accountability Project, a nonprofit group that defends whistle-blowers.
Taylor Griffin, a Treasury Department spokesman, dismissed that interpretation, saying the president issued Executive Order 13303 to protect proceeds from the sale of Iraqi crude oil, which are supposed to go into a special fund that the United Nations set up in May to help rebuild the war-torn country.
"This does not protect the companies' money," Griffin said. "It protects the Iraqi people's money."
I just can't believe that position.
US used napalm-like bombs
Very interesting story, and the quotes are quite....strange. [via Horst]
US forces used napalm-like MK-77 firebombs against Iraqi forces in their drive toward Baghdad last spring, a Pentagon official confirmed on Thursday, defending their use as legal and necessary.
US marine corps jets dropped the firebombs at least once in March to take out Iraqi positions at the town of Safwan just across the Kuwait border from the US-led invasion force, the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity.
"It is like this: you've got enemy that's hard to get at. And it will save your own lives to use it, and there is no international contraventions against it," the official said. "I don't know that there is any humane way to kill your enemy."
Marines used the napalm-like bombs on at least two other occasions during the drive to Baghdad - against Iraqis defending a bridge across the Saddam Canal and near a Tigris river bridge north of the town of Numaniyah in south central Iraq, the San Diego Tribune reported on Tuesday.
"We napalmed both those (bridge) approaches," Colonel Randolph Alles, the commander of Marine Air Group 11, was quoted as telling the newspaper. "Unfortunately, there were people there because you could see them in the (cockpit) video.
"They were Iraqi soldiers there. It's no great way to die," he said.
The MK-77 are filled with a different mix of incendiary chemicals than napalm, but have the same terrifying effect, a penetrating fire that seeps into dug-in infantry positions.
"The generals love napalm," Alles was quoted as saying. "It has a big psychological effect."
The US military destroyed its stock of napalm bombs in 2001 because they were deemed an environmental hazard.
You have go to like that Colonel. "The Generals love napalm".
BloggerCon
Deb is back and points to:
Dave Winer's organizing BloggerCon 2003 at Harvard on October 4. I'd love to attend but the $500 is about ten times my conference budget these days. Should be fabulous, so I encourage fellow bloggers to show up in force.
Myself and Bernie discussed going, but I doubt I will be able to make it. Anybody want to donate some money towards the trip? LOL.
Participatory Journalism
Dan points to interesting series of articles on the benefits journalism may gain from blogging.
I remember Stephen Pollard making similar observations at the weblog seminar in Westminster. Ideas and written pieces can be published online and vetted by readers before going to print, blogging helps the journalism process. I love it.
Bush backs Arnie
George Bush has said of Arnie "I think he'd be a good governor".
Watching the Running Man being interviewed I find that I like his style. I think he will be elected. And I'd vote for him.
Enlarging spam
God help us and save us. [via Bernie]
Why do your inboxes get full of spam, asking you if you want a drug to enlarge your penis? Because it works.
Thousands of dumbasses fall for it, and send off money only to receive a dud product or no product at all.
An order log left exposed at one of Amazing Internet Products' websites revealed that, over a four-week period, some 6,000 people responded to e-mail ads and placed orders for the company's Pinacle herbal supplement. Most customers ordered two bottles of the pills at a price of $50 per bottle.
Do the math and you begin to understand why spammers are willing to put up with the wrath of spam recipients, Internet service providers and federal regulators.
Since July 4, Amazing Internet Products would have grossed more than half a million dollars from Goringly.biz, one of several sites operated by the company to hawk its penis pills.
Is it more dumb people, or smart companies?
Irish blog meet
Karlin is hoping to get the Irish bloggers together again for some beers. I guess I don't really count since I am now an ex-pat(rick), but I would love to attend. I think it might conflict with my trip to Paris.
Give the UN a real force
Brian Urquhart calls for the UN to be given real military force.
But in the age of humanitarian intervention, the human catastrophes of failed states and civil wars will continue to come before the Security Council. If UN members can no longer urgently provide the necessary peacekeeping troops to moderate desperate, if politically insignificant, situations, some alternative must be found - unless of course, its members were to conclude that the Security Council has no responsibility in such matters.
Everyone involved, including the United States, has now expressed remorse for the failure to stop the Rwanda genocide nine years ago. How many more human disasters will fester and multiply before an effective means of international intervention is found? From a purely practical point of view, a highly trained rapid reaction force, permanently at the disposal of the Security Council, would be the most efficient way of spearheading international efforts to deal with the Liberias of the future. Even to mention this idea is heresy in some circles in Washington, and it is disliked by some governments, but amid the desperate appeals for help from victims of anarchy and civil war, surely it deserves renewed consideration.
I am inclined to agree, at least in theory, but if humans stop going to war will we cease to be human?
August 05, 2003
America and the UN, together again?
The rebuilding of Iraq is exposing an interesting rift on the political right: Is "unilateralism" a matter of expediency or theology?
The United States is finding itself short of soldiers and money as it tries to bring democracy and stability to Iraq. It has deployed nearly 150,000 soldiers, many of whom have been there since last year, and some are openly grumbling that they want to go home. But given the demands of deployments in Afghanistan, Kosovo, Bosnia, South Korea and elsewhere, there are few if any replacement units available.
There is also not much money available to cover reconstruction efforts that will probably cost more than $100 billion. With the United States spending almost $4 billion a month on its Iraqi military operations, and with this year's budget deficit ballooning to more than $450 billion, neither the Bush administration nor Congress is eager to tap the Treasury for more reconstruction aid. Yet only $2.5 billion has been appropriated so far - a grossly inadequate amount.
The White House would love to get more help, financial and military, from America's allies, but so far they are coming up with only a pittance. There are just 13,000 non-American soldiers in Iraq, most of them British. A Polish-led polyglot division of 9,000 more is set to arrive in September. But potential major contributors like Egypt, Germany, India, Pakistan, Russia and Turkey - to say nothing of France - have hinted they would help only if the occupation carried more of a United Nations imprimatur.
Are they serious? Who knows? But there's no harm in testing their sincerity. If another UN resolution could reduce the strain on U.S. forces and wallets, why not seek it? The United States has worked well with the United Nations in Bosnia, Kosovo, Afghanistan and many other places. Why not in Iraq?
The only serious argument against the idea is that the occupation would be hindered by having to deal with tangled lines of authority and conflicting agendas. This is a legitimate worry, but it's hard to believe that administrative efficiency is such an overwhelming consideration when you consider that the Polish-led division will field troops from more than a dozen countries. The Spanish will speak English with the Poles, who will speak Russian with the Ukrainians. (What language will they use with the Mongolians?)
A UN presence might entail some loss of U.S. control, but the U.S. viceroy, L. Paul Bremer, is already ceding power to a local governing council. And the vast bulk of military forces would still be from America - at the end of the day, it would still call the shots. Another Security Council resolution would change the perception of U.S. dominance more than the reality.
Yet there are many on the right who would rather vote for Howard Dean than come crawling back to the United Nations. Even many reasonable conservatives fear that any accommodation of Secretary-General Kofi Annan is unwarranted.
It is easy to see why conservatives are suspicious of the United Nations. Any organization whose human rights commission could be headed by Libya hardly deserves the adulation that it receives in some quarters. America will never cede to the Security Council the exclusive authority to make decisions of war or peace. Nor would any other major nation.
There was nothing wrong with President George W. Bush's decision to invade Iraq without UN blessing. President Bill Clinton and NATO did the same thing in Kosovo in 1999. The issue of whether to involve the United Nations in a particular problem should be based on pragmatic considerations: Does it help or hurt in achieving America's foreign policy objectives?
Unfortunately, an excess of emotion in American politics has long made it hard to think rationally about this issue. Many on the left automatically assume that the United Nations is always the solution, while many on the right make the equally knee-jerk assumption that it is always the problem.
The reality is that the United Nations, while hardly a panacea, has its uses, especially in a place like Liberia where America has no intention of taking on the long-term task of nation-building. It's too soon to know whether Iraq falls into this category. Much will depend on negotiations over what form an additional Security Council resolution might take. But conservatives shouldn't try to short-circuit this process by ruling out UN involvement no matter what.
The primary objective should be to help Iraq and help America, not to hurt the United Nations.
The writer is a fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations and author of "The Savage Wars of Peace: Small Wars and the Rise of American Power." A pragmatic alliance
August 03, 2003
Who are you calling evil?
Janet Dubé on religion, and prayer in US politics
In President Bush's now notorious phrase "axis of evil", it is obviously the word evil that suggests he was using a religious idea for political purposes. Axis has scientific meanings in a way evil cannot. Some meanings of axis suggest the phrase axis of evil is nonsense: others amplify its vague menace.
...
But it is not just because they're politicians that many find the idea of Bush and Blair in private prayer creepy or frightening. It is because they have power and we don't want a holy war. Use religious language to pray for reconciliation, forgiveness and peace says Professor Pagels, and keep political discourse open to everyone
August 02, 2003
Danube is flowing into a new Europe
Richard Berstein from the NY Times has a good article in the IHT today. He talks about the river Danube, its history and the history associated with it.
I do see one small error in his piece. Well its actually a big error, and one I wouldn't expect to see in the Herald Tribune.
After all, Romania, where the Danube empties into the Black Sea, not far from the border of Ukraine, is to become a full-fledged member of the European Union next year. The same is true of other countries along the eastern sections of the Danube: Slovakia, Hungary, Bulgaria. That may be of overriding importance to the future symbolism of the Danube.
In fact, Romania will not join the EU in 2004. More likely in 2007/8.
US government warns of imminent net attack
Interesting that the Microsoft website was taken down just as these warnings were going out.
US government computer experts have warned that hackers may be preparing a large-scale coordinated attack. This could involve the release of a virulent type of internet worm or use thousands of enslaved personal computers to bring down websites.
Hackers turn to Google to find weakest links
Computer hackers have adopted a startling strategy in their attempts to break into websites. By using the popular search engine Google, they do not have to visit a site to plan an attack. Instead, they can get all the information they need from Google's cached versions of web pages, say experts in the US.
One way that hackers can break into a website is by hunting for private pages that contain the usernames and passwords required to access secure parts of the site. These pages are usually hidden from the casual browser because there are no hyperlinks to them on the web.
Coming Clean 2: Monaghan and Iraq
Seems that P45 have come clean on that Iraq-Monaghan similarity story. They managed to fool even the British Broadcasting Corporation and the almost always accurate Register.
Not alone that, they have also come clean on many other stories following a piece on Irish radio show, 5-7 live.
Well done lads! Darn those lazy reporters
God I read that Berlusconi story in the Irish Independent and it was given a fair amount of coverage! LOL
There's Money Afoot!
Ryan's unique blog is worth a look on a regular basis. He is a good friend of mine from Cork. This week he looks forward to the return to school. I bet he never thought he would be looking forward to going back!
Librarians Hunt Down Saddam Hussein
Horst over in Austria has redesigned his weblog, very nice work. His latest post is good too, he is lamenting the fact that the library he works in is in trouble:
Vienna University Library is the largest Austrian library, housing 5.8 million books in 60 different locations. The main library, home of 2.5 million books, was last upgraded in the 1960s. There is only space for one year's acquisitions left, and the user areas are in an abysmal state.
If only Horst was the one to tell the Americans where Saddams sons were !
Chain letters must die
Deborah has been on and off her blog lately, but only contributing intermittently. Here she decides that chain emails are a blight.
It's like the old National Lampoon cover: "Buy this magazine or we'll shoot this dog." Delete this e-mail and you're a selfish swine. Really? I'm not so convinced.
Microsoft's Web Site Brought Down By Attack
The Beast's website, Micrsoft.com was brought down by a suspected DOS attack on Friday. It looks like a concerted attack, I remember the Guardian not being available for over an hour that day.
I think we are likely to see more of this, but how long before weblogs are brought down for saying something controversial or for breaking a huge story online?
No Political Statute of Limits for Democrats
Dan is none too happy, reading criticism of US presidential hopeful, Howard Dean. He then cites some things about Bush that make republicans cringe:
He went AWOL from his Air National Guard unit during the Vietnam War.
He quit a too-heavy drinking habit at age 40.
He covered up a drunk-driving arrest.
August 01, 2003
GILLIGAN UNMASKED
Andrew Sullivan cheers the front page story from todays Guardian, the next chapter in the neverending Dossier story. From a lefty paper Andrew? Im shocked!
To be honest this whole WMD story is something very strange. I think that WMD will be found. Sometime in perhaps mid August we will get damning evidence of the existence of a at least a programme, if not the actual stuff itself. But whether or not the WMD were there when Saddam was in power I will leave at your discretion.
But I also think it might be something of a PR exercise. Since reading Colin Powells take on how to handle the public I have become increasingly aware of the methodologies of governments. If I were sitting in the White House or in No 10 no I would take the following line:
1.Dont find the WMD straight away - thus not making it seem as if you planted them there yourself.
2. Allow the war critics and detractors debate the idea that WMD dont exist, taking it hook, line and sinker. Let them dig themselves holes.
3. When its least expected, when the detractors are at their strongest in the eyes of the public, release the evidence.
4. Lap up the kudos from both the media and public for being 'right' all along.
Just a thought.