Addiction or a Proto-Cyberspace?

So I just discovered Shelley Batts' Retrospectacle a little while ago. It's a pretty good read. Recently, though, she's done a bit of work on supposed video game addiction, and a survey intended to measure the extent to which people are "addicted" to WoW.

I threw the scare quotes in there because I'm not quite convinced that most WoW players are any more addicted than Warhammer junkies, D&D players, Civil War recreationists, or anybody else who engages in a slightly geeky hobby. I also wasn't impressed by the questions in the poll, which required extraordinarily subjective judgements from a self-selected population of people who really don't like said hobby.

It got me to thinking, though. The main appeal of MMORPGs is that they serve as the closest thing to the sort of "cyberspace" or "metaverse" that you always saw in science fiction back during the cyberpunk years. Unlike the rest of the internet, which generally reads as the world's most gigantic interactive magazine, they feature avatars, virtual spaces, and all that lovely crap that Gibson and Sterling were on about. Generally the "verbal" interaction is limited to text, but even that's changing with the growing predominance of VOIP networks in high-level play. This (as well as the growing popularity of Second Life and its branded counterparts, like that MTV Laguna beach thing) suggests that it's one stage of the evolution of the internet into "cyberspace".

That is, if that interpretation is correct. The other way that people engage the Internet, especially recently, is as an augmentation of the real world, rather than as a seperate place altogether. There's no seperate "cyberspace" for Facebook or Myspace or MSN users; it augments the connectivity of their pre-existing life and their pre-existing identity. These people might play Warcraft or fart around in Second Life or whatnot, but it's not anywhere near as important a watershed for them, because the point is not a virtual space, but this increased connectivity.

The former interpretation of the Internet's role was far more common back in the early days of public participation in the Internet, and formed the foundation of that whole "wild west" thing that dominated it at the time. Since it was a different realm with different rules, people tended to adopt those rules and change their identity and personae to fit that realm. Freedom of speech was king, ideas were seen as more important than credentials, and "civility" was for n00bs, so people tended to adopt pseudonyms and jump into the freewheeling, flaming, endless discussion/argument that was (say) Usenet or IRC or whatnot. They also played "MUD"s, "MUCK"s and "MOO"s, all of which were virtual, textual realms where avatars interacted with other avatars. They are reinforcements of the virtuality of this other electronic world.

(Online games like EverQuest or World of Warcraft are just further advancements of these concepts. Everquest was really just a graphical version of a type of MUD called a DekuMUD, and World of Warcraft is a heavy refinement of the EQ concept.)

And, yes, this sort of attitude is still powerful today, but the "augmentationists" have come in like gangbusters. Often using their real names and being (almost embarrassingly) frank about every aspect of their lives, they use the medium to connect with one another and express themselves. They expect the online world to work like the offline one, except more so. They want to talk to each other, so they get VOIP and a bazillion networking sites. They want a soapbox, so they publish their diaries online as weblogs. (Ahem.) They want to watch and make TV, and look into each other's lives, so they get Youtube. They want to know who they're talking to, so they mercilessly attack anybody who dares to use a pseudonym.

(Whatzisname is an arch-augmentationist, for example; heavy self-promoters usually are. Their notoriety is useless in virtual spaces, and many loathe the very idea of anonymous critics, as they can't leverage differences in notoriety to crush "upstarts".)

And they want all this to augment their already-existing offline lives, so they want the Internet on a cell phone, so they don't have to sit at a computer.

Obviously, these are generalizations, but I think they speak to why MMORPGs tend to be so divisive and at the same time so compelling, without resorting to the "addiction" crutch. The latter group will play the games, but since it's a virtual world, not an augmentation--you're interacting with people you don't know in real life in an obviously virtual space--it really isn't going to be that compelling. Its unreality will be a major turn-off, and you won't understand or appreciate why someone would like these virtual worlds and these pseudonymous friends. You might think "well, it's fun running around being an elf", but there's no way in hell you'd have the tolerance for raiding. Or, for that matter, for raiders.

On the other hand, spending three or four hours a day reading, writing, and compulsively checking Facebook et al is no big deal, and neither is spending all day talking on the telephone or typing away on the ultimate augmentationist accessory: A BLACKBERRY. Yeah, Berry "addicts" might be outside and theoretically interacting with people, but have YOU tried getting one's attention? They're lucky if they don't ram into a wall.

My opinion? There needs to be some perspective here. If you're on Facebook all day, except when you're typing away on your Berry, you aren't really that much better than that smelly person who sits in his room and plays WoW all day. You're still on the damned Interwebs, typing away when you could be doing something productive. Both groups need to get a little insight and a little balance, but both have a point: the Internet is not quite a place, nor quite a medium, but somewhere in between. There is a place for real-name interaction like with Facebook, but it shouldn't be required: you abandon the ideal of pure, unencumbered ideas and egalitarian debate at your own peril. Berries are fun, but you should be able to turn them off.

And sometimes, just sometimes, people play games together because killing Internet Dragons is fun.

Matthew Yglesias moves to the Atlantic Monthly

To be honest, I'm not sure if I should be congratulating Matthew Yglesias yet or not; while it's a great opportunity, the Atlantic Monthly hasn't been the most friendly rag for progressive thought lately.

Plus, Andrew Sullivan.

That said, I think this definitely a positive step for said rag, and Yglesias is a good choice for shaking things up there and making them better.

Happy International Pixel-Stained Technopeasant Day!

I don't have anything to offer but a link to John Scalzi, who can explain what it is.

(It's free fiction. Free fiction is good!)

Why haven't I mentioned Vonnegut yet?

Because I'm in denial, dammit, that's why.

Ted Barlow disease strikes again

Pretty swiftly, this time: TDH Strategies hasn't been around for THAT long.

Well, Crap (Pt. 2)

The bad news just keeps on coming, huh?

Go read Maryscott. Who apparently got censored on Kos for dropping the f-bomb, as Kos was getting all squiggly about the prospect of getting banned from government sites or whatever.

(The fact that Kos is already notoriously banned at most of these sites, and that there's no earthly reason why things in a title tag would flag where other things don't, is beyond me. But it's Kos. Say what you want about Duncan, and I probably have, but at least he isn't THAT, well, fucking spineless.)

But that crap ain't important. What's important is that the people who want a womb veto just won an important victory, and it's because the Dems were "keeping their powder dry" back during Alito's confirmation. Which is ironic, because as far as I can tell, that BS didn't have a damned thing to do with last November's win.

Just for Deoxy

Deoxy asked in my earlier Virginia piece about how I feel about how the Virginia Tech murders relate to gun laws, and whether concealed carry might have helped.

My response is simple: John Lott is a loon, concealed carry laws have had no discernable positive impact on crime stats, and gun-toting heroes stopping crazed killers with their handy sidearms is something that happens on television.

Clear enough?

There's a Discworld cartoon?

Crikey! I had no idea it existed! But, apparently, it does. And here's its intro.



Not quite sure about the animation quality, but a giant CG A'Tuin is always welcome.

(One quibble: A'Tuin is not a he, unless space turtle physiology is far stranger than the whole "elephants and discs" thing.)

Edit: apparently this episode (the "Reaper Man" adaptation) was never produced. Shame, that, although they did do Soul Music and Wyrd Sisters.

User Interface Design!

From the TED conference last year, a really great and pretty funny talk by David Pogue about how simplicity is good, but deceptively hard.



You can't see the code here, so I'll have to say that it's really ironic that the embed code for this ode to simplicity is Byzantine.

(Oh, and don't be put off by the guy's horrifying expression in the still. He's just reacting to tech support. You've made that face too.)

Happiness

May I just say that I'm REALLY glad that most musicians don't think like Howard V. Hendrix, who claims that people who provide free content online are "webscabs"?

Fortunately, John Scalzi tore him several new and interesting orifices over this nonsense.

(Stross, Scalzi... I'm starting to notice that SF writers are REALLY good bloggers. Or maybe vice versa in Scalzi's case. Old Man's War was a great read.)

Apropos of Nothing

Why on earth do so many critics seem to think that Rap and that whole Thug culture thing sprang forth, fully formed, from the forehead of Zeus?

Are people really so naive as to think that were there not rapping misogynistic pimps and drug dealers, that somehow misogynistic pimps and drug dealers would cease to exist, and all the shit that has been rained down on the African-American nation since they were dragged over in chains would evaporate? The Game existed before rappers were rapping about it, and the Game will exist even were they muzzled, because they didn't start it and they can't stop it.

As much as Don Imus is a tool, we shouldn't lose sight of that.

Bitch Ph.D. Sets us straight

Bitch Ph.D.:

But (1) the main problem in the Sierra case was rampant misogyny, and I don't see any 'We won't tolerate racism or sexism' up there. And (2) Pseudonymity is not the problem. The fact of the matter is that an established pseudonym is at least as much of a 'check' on assholishness as the real name of someone no one's ever heard of; 'Bitch, Ph.D.' has a reputation to maintain (of sorts), and that's one reason she doesn't say dumbass shit. (I realize that this is debatable. What I mean is I won't threaten people or out them or otherwise act like an asshole.)

I wouldn't even add "of sorts"- an established pseudonym definitely has value in and of itself, and only an idiot would throw that away needlessly.

It's like saying that since a corporation you own can be dissolved that it has no worth. Well, no, that isn't the way it works. That should be obvious, but those who neither understand nor appreciate pseudonymity's importance on these here Interwebs often forget that.

Here's more:

In fact, anonymous and pseudonymous writing is as old as the hills. And foolish critics have always argued that anonymous writers were cowards, or frauds, or mercenaries. But one of the major benefits of anonymous writing is that it forces readers to focus on what they're reading, rather than on the personality of the person who writes it. (And, as a rather nice result, it forces authors to do the same, which saves the rest of us listening to them whining about whether or not the other side "likes" them ::cough::Malkin::cough::Althouse::.) It fosters and encourages a public sphere--one of the central requirements of a, yes, civil society--by allowing marginalized folks, whistleblowers, inner-circle critics, and people who are (hello?) easily threatened to speak out without putting themselves in jeopardy. These are good things. Things we should encourage, not forbid.

It's funny how this sort of shit (swearing! Quelle Horreur!) never really changes either. You'll always have "name" bloggers trading on whatever rep they've managed to scrape up through offline endeavours getting shocked and horrified that it counts for little here. Authors, academics, and pundits all, sharing the common belief that You Must Not Question Them, For They Have Status and You Don't.

To hell with that.

Ooh, I like this.

From Emptybottle.org.

They don't like that code of conduct much either.

(Edit: Image is a little muddy from transparancies, but you get the idea)

Threats?

There's a whole big hubbub going on over on Majikthise about a female blogger getting death threats, and where the line is drawn online between freedom of speech and the right to feel safe whilst speaking.

I wrote a fairly lengthy response over there on the issue; I won't reproduce it here, but feel free to check it out. And no, I didn't bring up Whatzisname.

Edit:

Oh, and the quote-unquote "blogger's code of ethics" is simply best ignored. It will simply be a bludgeon used by non-blogger media types to take shots at bloggers, without addressing any real issues, and certainly without doing one whit to prevent stalking and intimidation. At best it will stop nothing, and at worst (including the bits about comments) it'll serve as a pretext for silencing frank discussion and debate. To her credit, Lindsay isn't a fan either. Nor are (as Lindsay states) "Kos, Bitch PhD, Pandagon, As I Please, just to name a few".

Economics!

There, that should scare off all the creepy people who just come here because of a google search that brings up a post with the words "kiddy porn" in the title that I wrote.

Now that they've left, I'll recommend a good bit of popular economics writing for you folks. It's the introduction to the new edition of John Maynard Keynes's The General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money, it's written by your friend and mine Paul Krugman, and it can be found at the Unofficial Paul Krugman Web Page.

(It's also from about a month back, but heck with it. It's a good read anyway.)

Krugman breaks down both why Keynes is vital, why reading the "hard parts" of the book is important to understanding what Keynes was up to, why "new classicists" owe so much to Keynes, and why Keynes' critics are full of it. It's a good read, as Krugman's popular economics work usually is, so go read it.

And while you're doing it, rail against those bastards at the Times for putting him behind a subscription wall while people like Krauthammer go unchecked.

Gunman in Virginia

I'll just Quote:

BLACKSBURG, Va. — A gunman opened fire in a dorm and classroom at Virginia Tech on Monday, killing 21 people in the deadliest campus shooting rampage in U.S. history. The gunman was killed, bringing to death toll to 22, but it was unclear if he was shot by police or took his own life.

"Today the university was struck with a tragedy that we consider of monumental proportions," said Virginia Tech president Charles Steger. "The university is shocked and indeed horrified."

The name of the gunman was not immediately released, and investigators offered no motive for the attack. It was not immediately known if the gunman was a student.

The bloodbath took place at opposite sides of the 2,600-acre campus, beginning at about 7:15 a.m. at West Ambler Johnston, a co-ed dormitory that houses 895 people, and continuing about two hours later at Norris Hall, an engineering building, authorities said. Police said they were still investigating the shooting at the dorm when they got word of the gunfire at the classroom building.

Some of the dead were students. One student was killed in the dorm, and the others were killed in the classroom, Virginia Tech Police Chief W.R. Flinchum.

Crap. Not much to add, except "Crap."

Wow, Go Dave Obey!

Over on ThinkProgress, we see Congressman Dave Obey (D-WI) absolutely slamming the Washington Post over an editorial that repeated the hoary old lines about "unconditional retreat" and "endorsement by MoveOn.org". Here's the transcript:

Let me submit to you the problem we have today is not that we didn’t listen enough to people like the Washington Post. It’s that we listened too much. They endorsed going to war in the first place. They helped drive the drumbeat that drove almost 2/3 of the people in this chamber to vote for that misguided, ill-advised war. So I make no apology. If the moral sensibilities of some people on this floor, or the editorial writers of The Washington Post are offended because they don’t like the specific language contained in our benchmarks or in our timelines. What matters in the end is not what the specific language is. What matters is whether or not we produce a product today that puts pressure on this Administration and sends a message to Iraq, to the Iraqi politicians that we’re going to end the permanent long-term dead end babysitting service. That’s what we’re trying to do.

And if The Washington Post is offended about the way we do it, that’s just too bad. But we’re in the arena. They’re not. And this is the best we can do given the tools that we have. And I make absolutely no apology for it. And I would say one thing, those of us who voted against the war in the first place wouldn’t have nearly as hard a time getting us out of the war if people like The Washington Post and those who criticized us on the floor yesterday hadn’t supported going into that stupid war in the first place.

What can I add to that, really? Too many media outlets like to pretend that they can stand above the fray and give impartial advice, and yet not be responsible today for the "advice" they gave yesterday. The Post's editorial board and neo-con columnists are particularly bad for this, but hardly unique. It's nice to see a Dem standing up against them.

Sadly, Not All Piracy Pundits Are as Wise as Charlie

Case in Point: Whatzisname.

(Who, I once again should point out for the benefits of the Powers That Be, I hold no personal grudge or vendetta against. Sleep soundly, O Punk, for I bring only words.)

No, my issue is (aside from the banality of "downloading is bad" and some odd punctuation) actually a pair of assertions. One is sensible. The other, not so much.

Assertion the first:

That, also, was true. The U.S. Commerce Department estimates that piracy and counterfeiting diverts up to US$250-billion a year that would otherwise land in American pockets. Just under a year ago, meanwhile, the Canadian Alliance Against Software Theft suggested that software piracy alone was costing the national economy slightly less than $10-billion annually. However, the association warned, "losses from software piracy worldwide amounted to $41-billion in 2005."

A lot of these extraordinary numbers, obviously, are -- like many of the numbers that attempt to describe the magnitude few of your belongings, just because I f***ing felt like it? It's the same f***ing thing, mate."

And it certainly f***ing is. Unauthorized downloading, and its related crimes of piracy and counterfeiting, is inarguably criminal. When the U.S. trade deficit with China has ballooned to an extraordinary $232.5-billion, the Bush administration's of myriad crimes -- completely speculative. The actual losses could be more, or they could be less. No one knows for sure, not even the intellectual property pirates.

(Is anybody else wondering what happened here? It seems to be missing an emdash or a subject or has too many chapter breaks or something. Not my point, but geez. I'm no copy editor, but I thought somebody at the Post was.)

Sorry, diversion.

Anyway, that last bit about it being "completely speculative" is absolutely true, and ties in with that brilliant piece on piracy by Charlie Stross that I highlighted a little while back. The problem with trying to figure out the lost revenue of artists et al is that nobody can really pinpoint how many people would have bought it otherwise. That doesn't change anything but a strictly utilitarian analysis of piracy, of course, as the presumed right of monopoly over copying doesn't really take into account lost sales, but if you're being utilitarian about it, the issue is the lost revenues.

Assertion the second:

There is a reason why so many bands and musicians now tour endlessly, I informed a friend the other day. It is because no one under the age of 25 purchases music anymore -- they download it, burn it and rip it for free. They steal it. The musicians, therefore, are obliged to play concerts wherever they can find a stage, to survive.

Whoops! Houston, we have a problem. He just finished saying that we have no idea how many lost sales there are... and now we're getting a bold assertion that "no one under the age of 25 purchases music anymore". If nobody can tell how much downloading is going on, how on earth would somebody know that "nobody purchases music anymore?"

Oops.

Another problem appears. If this is true, just where the hell is Apple getting all that iTunes money from? I mean, yes, those are downloads, but they're also purchased music. Last I checked Apple was crowing about selling around a billion songs online or something like that.

Does the iTunes record store count?

And for that matter, while I do have to bow to his superior knowledge of the life of a musician--albeit a non-touring one--I do wonder how he knows that most bands and musicians "tour endlessly". For that matter, how does he know how much more they tour than they used to? I always got the impression that the people who were truly hurt by downloading were the big recording artists, not the little guy who isn't going to see much royalties beyond what the record company recoups. Those other guys already toured endlessly. Is it that the big players are touring endlessly too? Surely there'd be some data on that to be shared.

Ok, I'm being a bit facetious here. Clearly someone's going a bit overboard to make a point. No worries: the life of a columnist is what it is. The point is that the youth are downloading rather a lot of stuff now. And yes, this is true. The problem is the same as it ever was, though: that we really don't know how many people are being turned on to new bands through free downloads that they subsequently buy the record for. (Case in point: I've been turned on to ultra-obscure musicians and bands through MySpace, Last.fm, Pandora, and other free music sources.)

And, yes, people DO buy things they can download for free, for the same reason as always- because the act of financially supporting a band means that you get to feel partially responsible for their artistic success. That's why rap artists are forever crowing about their sales and success at concerns- because they want the audience to feel that connection with them. They do.

And so do I.

(Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to fire up Pandora.)

Turkey Seeking Permission to Operate in Iraq

I had wondered whether Turkey was going to move into Iraqi Kurdistan.

According to Stratfor, it's pretty much happening. They're already doing strikes into Iraq, and they're seeking permission to go in with greater force. This piece in the LA Times suggests that the US is against it, but there is little the US can do, unless it is willing to fight a NATO ally to defend the Kurds and their increasingly-daring militants.

That said, this isn't supposed to be a full-fledged attack. The Turks want to get permission to strike against rebels, not invade Iraq. The question is whether smaller strikes will work; if they don't, things will escalate.

And I don't think they will work. The Kurds know that the U.S. sees them as an oasis of stability in Iraq, and also know that while the US would be loathe to fight the Turks, the Turks are equally loathe to jeopardize everything over the Kurds. The Turks, in turn, are counting on the Kurds to not want to rock the boat either, and to squelch the rebels. The key issue here is which perception is wrong: which player has been misread by the others. I think it's the Kurds- they're achingly close to de-facto independence that bleeds outside of the borders of "Iraq", and I don't think the rebels will be dissuaded from that. They aren't going to get squelched, and sooner or later Ankara will be forced to act.

What bothers me is that "sooner" seems to be a lot sooner than I had anticipated.

Err, wait a sec...

So the horrible bee die-off that we're seeing across North America and parts of Europe may be due to GMO?

The study in question is a small research project conducted at the University of Jena from 2001 to 2004. The researchers examined the effects of pollen from a genetically modified maize variant called "Bt corn" on bees. A gene from a soil bacterium had been inserted into the corn that enabled the plant to produce an agent that is toxic to insect pests. The study concluded that there was no evidence of a "toxic effect of Bt corn on healthy honeybee populations." But when, by sheer chance, the bees used in the experiments were infested with a parasite, something eerie happened. According to the Jena study, a "significantly stronger decline in the number of bees" occurred among the insects that had been fed a highly concentrated Bt poison feed.

According to Hans-Hinrich Kaatz, a professor at the University of Halle in eastern Germany and the director of the study, the bacterial toxin in the genetically modified corn may have "altered the surface of the bee's intestines, sufficiently weakening the bees to allow the parasites to gain entry -- or perhaps it was the other way around. We don't know."

Of course, the concentration of the toxin was ten times higher in the experiments than in normal Bt corn pollen. In addition, the bee feed was administered over a relatively lengthy six-week period.

Kaatz would have preferred to continue studying the phenomenon but lacked the necessary funding. "Those who have the money are not interested in this sort of research," says the professor, "and those who are interested don't have the money."

Crap.

(Courtesy skippy.)

Huh.

MaxSpeak went all Pajamas on us.

Then again, considering his experiences with Kos, I doubt he's going to be too inclined towards hooking up with Approved Sources. (tm)

I'm not confident that this will end well, but if it works, good on him.

Somebody Needs to Teach Broder the Prisoner's Dilemma

Maybe then he'll figure out that one guy conceding doesn't necessarily mean the other is going to concede squat.

How Broder missed Bush's tendency to pocket victories and go further whenever the Dems "play nice" is lost on me.

Matt too.

Warm Squigglies

Nothing brightens up the day like seeing something like this:



Thanks, Oliver!

(Edit: It should go without saying that the death of a young girl to a drunk driver is a tragedy. I would never make light of that.

Making light of an idiot like O'Reilley, though...)

BOOM!

...was narrowly NOT heard in the vicinity of the President yesterday.

The Detroit News: Credit Ford Motor Co. CEO Alan Mulally with saving the leader of the free world from self-immolation.

Mulally told journalists at the New York auto show that he intervened to prevent President Bush from plugging an electrical cord into the hydrogen tank of Ford's hydrogen-electric plug-in hybrid at the White House last week. Ford wanted to give the Commander-in-Chief an actual demonstration of the innovative vehicle, so the automaker arranged for an electrical outlet to be installed on the South Lawn and ran a charging cord to the hybrid. However, as Mulally followed Bush out to the car, he noticed someone had left the cord lying at the rear of the vehicle, near the fuel tank.

"I just thought, 'Oh my goodness!' So, I started walking faster, and the President walked faster and he got to the cord before I did. I violated all the protocols. I touched the President. I grabbed his arm and I moved him up to the front," Mulally said. "I wanted the president to make sure he plugged into the electricity, not into the hydrogen. This is all off the record, right?"

I know Darwin isn't really an avenging angel against stupid, but you have to admit that there must have been a few people who, upon reading this, didn't picture Darwin looking down, snapping his fingers, and saying "so close!"

Props to Brad DeLong.

Same Ol'...

And, yet again, we receive ample proof that Canadian Liberal "insiders" have absolutely no interest in winning the next federal election.

I mean seriously. Look at this:

Liberal Leader Stéphane Dion told a gathering of supporters last night in Toronto that if the Prime Minister wants to force an election, the Liberals are ready.

He did not, however, mention the small problem of a campaign plane. The Liberals don't have one and, according to a source, are scrambling to find one after being turned down by Air Canada. Insiders say there is growing concern among Liberals that they will not be able to get one before an election is called...

...A source said a Liberal representative recently approached Air Canada about leasing a plane but was turned down. The source said the airline was already committed to the two other campaigns and did not have a plane or crew that could hopscotch the country several times a week during a hectic election campaign.

Why the hell leak this? It does absolutely nothing except make the party look inept. It isn't that critical a story (I'm sure this will get sorted out), and the only possible newsworthiness is "ooh, look at how disorganized them Libs are compared to Harper". Which, I suppose, is exactly what the "source" wants.

I'll say this for the Dems: they may fight like cats and dogs during the primary, but at least when they choose presidential candidates, they back them.

Interesting Crossover

Over at The Great Orange Satan, there's a blurb by a Canadian diarist about Jason Cherniak's Liblogs and their attempts to respond to Stephen Harper's attack ads with ads of their own.

Since I hadn't really seen much crossover between the established American blog scene and the still-new Canadian one, I thought it was worthy of note.

(So feel free to get to noting.)

One thing I learned from that entry that I hadn't known is that Harper outsources his attack ad production to an American firm, Mclaughlin and Associates. Quite a piece of work, judging by the client list, producing material for everyone from the RNC to the Smokeless Tobacco Council to the American Conservative Union to the lovely and talented people at the Media Research Centre.

Were I one of those Canadian bloggers making attack ads, I'd leave aside the general question of Harper using attack ads to focus on how and why Harper is retaining the services of such people. Attack ads attacking attack ads are kind of silly, as Calgrit ably points out, but Liberals can dine out for YEARS at the prospect of tying together Stephen Harper's and Big Tobacco's advertising connections.

In any case, this cements something that should be foremost in their minds right now- they aren't competing against "Tories", but against the Republican Machine. Disastrous governance aside, the Republicans' ability to use that machine should never, ever be underestimated.

Edit: This particular ad may not be professional, but it ain't bad.



The comments over at Youtube for it cement a problem that the Liberals are going to have to face, though- Liberal supporters are severely, severely underrepresented online compared to their Conservative counterparts.

"What Do You Want Us to Do?"

So asked the Pentagon during the Iranian hostage crisis, (according to Matthew Yglesias quoting the Guardian), setting out a rich smorgaboard of military options to get that long-overdue war in Iran started.

Oddly enough, Britain just focused on getting her soldiers back diplomatically, instead of using it as an excuse to supposedly bomb Tehran into letting the MLK take over.

Odder still, it worked. Yes, Charles Krauthammer's complaining about it supposedly making the UK look bad and Iran look good. He's just pissed that, after the Iraq debacle, he's not going to be able to give his crackpot adoration of military force a second chance to work in the other "Ira" country. The sane people (including those running countries) have seen both the UK and Iran handle this reasonably well, sketchy British maps and against-the-wall Iranian intimidation tactics aside.

(Intimidation? Well, the soldiers reported that they were made to stand up against a wall, facing towards it, with the sound of weapons being cocked behind them. This is definitely not acceptable treatment of POWs- it's a coercion tactic plain and simple. I don't believe they were in any real danger, though, as that would have placed Iran itself in tremendous danger. I do wonder whether this has been influenced by the erosion of prisoner's civil liberties by the US and its allies, but it's hard to say.)

Krauthammer's vulgar "realism" aside, that the UK and Iran solved this diplomatically is a good thing.

Slight edits for clarity.

Pelosi in Syria?

Matthew Yglesias highlights how crazy the right (those in the press and otherwise) are going over Nancy Pelosi going to Syria.

Me, I say let 'em stew. The American public that could conceivably vote for Pelosi's party aren't going to be swayed by this, not anymore. Lines about how "America needs to speak with one voice" have always been nonsense, as Matt correctly points out. The president sets official policy, but unofficial positions and debates are as old as diplomacy, and the niceties of official policymaking aren't of interest to anybody outside Foggy Bottom and editorial writers with no memory beyond the last news cycle.

These guys are just ticked that the president can't dictate to the Speaker anymore.

A Simple Question

Yes, Sen. Clinton has supporters. That's not in question. The question, which I'm not seeing an answer to on Eschaton, is why?

Matt's right that some Clinton supporters might be dissuaded if they knew some of her policy positions. So, yes, in some sense some of Clinton's support, as with the rest of the candidates, might be based on voter ignorance.But the point I'm trying to make is that there are a lot of people who really like Clinton. Maybe they don't agree with her on every issue, and maybe they would disagree with her more on issues if they actually knew more. But lots of people really respect Clinton. They admire her. They believe she would be a good president. They'd be more than happy to trust her with the job. It's that basic fact - plenty of people really like and respect Hillary Clinton - which I see left out of a lot of the online chatter about her campaign.

First, and I'm sorry Atrios, but this is pretty goddamned milquetoast. "You have to respect her supporters because they actually like her?" Well, yes, of course she has supporters. So did Alan Keyes, but that doesn't stop people from (justifiably) making fun of him.

Online Dems, those who aren't trying to win influence with the Clinton crew, are very, very concerned about her foreign policy, and I gotta say that as someone who's a fan of interactive media I'm not the biggest fan of some of her domestic policy either.

(Someone trying to score points with soccer moms by attacking media is going to lose the male vote under the age of 40 droves. Absolute droves. Hollywood ain't necessarily going to like it much either.)

Say it isn't the policy. Say it isn't the mile-wide-but-puddle-deep appeal of name recognition. Say it isn't nostalgia for Bill. Say it isn't just ignorance. Say it isn't the ol' double-X chromosomes. Say it isn't whatever you want, Duncan, that's fine. Just say what it actually is afterwards, because I for one would like to know, and I think everybody who isn't on the Clinton Train would like to know too.

New Twist on an Old Line

Over at Republic of T, terrance talks about how his kid doesn't really hassle him for junk food much, because he doesn't watch that much advertising.

Fair enough. I wasn't one of those kids who didn't watch TV, or live in a TV-free household, or anything along those lines, but I've known people who are.

It does raise a question, though: considering that kids tend to spend so much time on the Internet or playing video games or whatnot rather than just watching TV nowadays, will the hold of advertising lessen over them? Are we going to see a generation of kids like the no-TV types?

Vlogging?

Matthew Yglesias is all about the vlogging.

Kevin Drum isn't, because text is easier to scan and easier to link in".

Demosthenes would like to point out that vlogging isn't really an option for some of us. That whole "nobody knows you're a dog" thing is way harder to pull off when everybody can see your muzzle and paws.

That said, I do think there's a happy medium of using video footage to supplement text.

Elsewhere on Tapped

McCain's new funding co-chair has killed, skinned, and barbecued a dog.

Originally on Think Progress.

Is it time to trot out the "cartoonish supervilliany" line yet?

Edit: An anonymous commentator pointed out that it was originally blogged at A Tiny Revolution, which linked to this Washington Post piece.

So there's the rest of the chain.

Syria Ended the Standoff?

First. Michael? It's Gruniad, not Guaridan.

Anyhow, the American Prospect linked to a Guardian story saying that Syria may well have convinced Iran to end the Iran/UK standoff. Which, if true, would be enormously embarrassing to a percentage of people who work in Washington that hovers somewhere around 100.

The Iranians are also claiming that the main reason this took so long was because everybody with the authority to DO anything was "out in the villages and mobile phones don't work there." Which I can also see, because bureaucracy is forever. I think it's far more likely that Ahmadinejad wasn't reigning in the Revolutionary Guard fast enough, though, because he thought that he could get some political advantage from the situation. I imagine Damascus cabling "what, are you absolutely MENTAL?" might have sharpened his perception somewhat, even if the domestic goals hadn't been met. Which they had, thanks to the confessions.

The main remaining question: "was there a deal?" Not sure. I'd say it's likely. The US/UK will never admit to it, but that doesn't mean squat. I'd keep a sharp eye on those Iranian prisoners in Iraq.

In the meantime, it looks like war just became a little less unlikely. Wingers will be screaming, but hell with 'em, this is an officially dodged bullet.

Speedy Summary

We’ve already seen that a nearly evenly divided Congress, incapable of taking definitive action, not only can but must be ignored. The Congress that cannot uphold its own votes has no mandate to dictate terms to the president, particularly in perilous times that call for strong leadership.

"All power to El Presidente."

The scary part is that this guy's a columnist for the Boston Herald.

Crisis of Confidence

In comments in that last post, William Hallowell pointed to the Foreign Affairs/Public Agendas' Foreign Policy Index. It shows that the American public wants a diplomatic solution in Iran, and that there's a growing preference for diplomacy over military action in general.

It also shows that public anxiety over America's place in the world is rising fast- it's already at 137 on their 200 point scale, scraping the edge a full-blown crisis of confidence. Not a big surprise, but definitely a big problem.

(The download link for the report itself. I'll get into it more when I have a chance to read through it.)

British Soldiers in Iran Freed?

So it would appear. Ahmadinejad said it was a gesture of goodwill and friendship.

Me, I'm more interested in this:

The action was a goodwill gesture for the Iranian new year, he said, adding that Iran had received a letter from Britain promising not to intrude into Iranian waters.

"The British government sent a letter to our Foreign Ministry and said it would not happen again. Of course, our decision had nothing to do with the letter. It's a decision made by our government to give a gift to the people of Britain," Ahmadinejad said in answer to a reporter's question.

Did this actually happen? The Guardian said that there was no confirmation, and the question of whether the UK relented on this point is huge, and I wasn't expecting them to do so.

Then again, it could be related to this:

Ahmadinejad's announcement came after Iran's state media reported that an Iranian envoy would be allowed to meet five Iranians detained by U.S. forces in northern Iraq. Another Iranian diplomat, separately seized two months ago by uniformed gunmen in Iraq, was released and returned Tuesday to Tehran.

This was the other question always lurking in the background- whether this was a tit-for-tat deal attempting to free the Iranian prisoners in Iraq. While they aren't freed yet, it looks like this may have opened the door.

In any case, it's good to hear that they're (probably) on their way home.

Charlie Stross is Goddamned Brilliant- This Time About Piracy

Why? Because he's the first content provider I've ever met who actually understands the pirate subculture.

There's a figure I've heard quoted (unfortunately I don't know the source so I can't cite you chapter and verse on it) to the effect that the typical dead-tree book has, over its life cycle, an average of four readers. Moreover, sell-through in paper is around 50-60%; that is, for every book sold to a customer, 0.8 to 1.0 other books end up being returned or pulped. So the real figure is more like ten readers per book actually printed by the publisher.

Think about that. Today, publishers try like crazy to tie ebooks to a single reader via DRM, in their misplaced zeal to reduce profit leakage; but for the economic hit from piracy to equal the economic hit from libraries and second-hand bookstores and friends lending friends books, the unlicensed distribution channels would have to be shifting nine ebooks for every one that is sold commercially.

And you know what? I don't think most of the ebook sharing subculture is even about reading the books in the first place — it's about collecting, and participating in a gift sub-culture where your kudos is governed by how much stuff you can give away. Yes, this probably sounds alien to a lot of you. All I can say is, you haven't spent enough time monitoring alt.binaries.e-books.flood and the other pirate ebook distribution channels. There are folks there who, of a weekend, post more books than I could read in a lifetimes. Random, eclectic, nonsensical collections of books, some of which are hopelessly corrupted and most of which are poorly proof-read. These folks are not reading what they put out. They're not putting it out with helping other people read the stuff as a primary goal, either. There's another dynamic at work, and no scheme to stop or reduce ebook piracy stands a chance of working until we understand why it's happening.

This is very true, and very old. Anybody who had come within fifty miles of the old game and software piracy "scene" (which is really the grandfather of everything done today) will be familiar with this mindset. The ONLY metric for how l33t you were was the sheer volume of 0-day (up-to-the minute content) that you hosted and/or uploaded. The quality didn't matter, and the content itself barely mattered. What mattered was the number of files and/or bytes that you pushed. When MP3 became big, back during the pre-Napster Internet, it was the same way for music. It's still pretty much the same way now.

Charlie's right- trying to use these guys' enormous stockpiles of unused material as any sort of metric of lost sales is pointless and deceptive. The two really have nothing to do with one another- it's like looking at a warehouse of unsold books and pretending that they've actually been sold to somebody. I'm not sure what a good metric is for the effects of piracy, but that ain't it.

Charlie's also right about the problem of libraries and used booksales. I think he missed an opportunity, though, in looking at other media and how they approach these issues. Libraries tend not to have anywhere near as many movies and television shows as they do books, for example, and while one could sneer about quality issues, a really good show can still be a more worthy addition than a crappy book, but you're more likely to see the latter than the former. That's partially because (I believe) movie sellers and rental outlets don't want to see books in the library, but also because the culture of lending that surrounds books has never caught on with other media.

And yet, if you look further, you'll notice something else- while you may see a few movies at the library, you will never see an electronic game. Why? Well, it's simple: the culture surrounding THAT format is still newer than movies, and absolutely paranoid about producers not getting maximal control over their "intellectual property" (A term that came into existence around the same time as mass market computer gaming). Look at the growing controversy over something as innocuous as used game sales:

As I began to collate these woes, I started to get the sense that there was a kind of Mexican Standoff taking place, except one of the parties is pointing hundreds of guns at the other - one weapon per retail outlet. There is literally no bargain to be made, and without a shelf to sell your software from it's not so much "their way or the highway," it's their way or oblivion. So they're free to do things like, oh, suggest "market correct" pricing, or nudge the release date. Note that they are doing this while at the same time planning to stock your product at a low threshold and then preferentially sell the used version. I'm surprised that these camps don't fight with knives at shared events.

I don't think breaking the ability to play used games is the answer, like they were talking about in this ancient rumor, but I understand why they would experiment with that kind of Doomsday Device. For me, it's not any more complicated than "used titles don't support the people who make games." The sale doesn't exist. I don't expect this to be a concept that the Madden Gamer seizes upon and makes his way of life. But as people who genuinely respect the medium and those who toil to refine and elevate our leisure hours, it's worth keeping in mind.

Going completely digital is a growing option for PC centered titles and its native developers - for example, I'm typing this post while Command & Conquer 3 drips down to me via EA's digital solution. I've also been a huge proponent of Steam. But even in the next round of consoles, you'll see those massive hard discs put to work storing full products. Marketplace, EDI, and the Shopping Channel are the first chapter of a story that ends poorly for Gamestop.

Bolding is mine. If anybody said anything like this about books, particularly the bolded section, they'd get laughed out of town. They lend books, for heaven's sake, and you're complaining about used book sales? Yet there is no functional difference between a book and a game. None. Both can be copied, both can be lent, both can be sold to a bookseller and rebought used. Both can be good, both can be crap. It's just different media, brought forth in different cultures: one celebrating the public domain and sharing information, the other fearing and loathing it while making nasty little comments about resales.

Unfortunately, the march of progress in this case does not appear to be on the side of the angels.

So, Charlie, when you ask "what is to be done", I'd suggest that the first step is getting away from the books, and looking at what else is going on out there. Ebooks are just one small part of a much, much broader conflict.

Internet Power Seizure?

I'm not sure, but it looks like the US government is trying to pretty much take over control of the whole DNS system.

(DNSes, or "Domain Name Servers", are how it translates an IP into a web address and vice versa.)

Essentially, this is how it works. Right now the biggest problem with DNS servers is that they're pretty easy to spoof. This is how most web "hacking" is done- you simply convince DNS servers to go to IP A instead of IP B, and boom, everybody who's trying to go to the White House's website ends up on the website of unscrupulous thieves and villians.

(Ahem)

They're trying to get around that by using public key encryption. This is the same kind of encryption that you use all the time when you're doing sensitive stuff on the Internet, like banking or shopping or donating money to said unscrupulous thieves. The whole thing is supposed to be controlled on a geographic basis, so that the authorities that handle domain names within a certain area now (like Verisign) still do so, but on a more authoritative basis.

Unfortunately, the Department of Homeland Security is trying to step in and scoop up ALL the keys themselves, for the entire Internet. They would know the keys, and be easily able to generate them. This would allow the US government to spoof any website it pleases, anywhere on earth, with relative ease.

Needless to say, the non-US domain name providers ain't too happy about this. To be honest, neither am I. Not necessarily just because one country shouldn't have all this power, but because I'm damned sure that the right-wing ideologue tools over at DHS shouldn't.

I mean, seriously, do YOU want to give the guys who screwed up Katrina the keys to the Internet?

Just for Upyernoz

Robert Mugabe should be shown the door as quickly as possible, but I don't think he's going to leave until he has to.

And I don't think the general strike is going to be enough to get him to go, because I'm not convinced that he really cares about the economy of Zimbabwe anywhere near as much as he cares about keeping down the opposition.

That said, he's also got little in the way of crutches to lean on to retain power. He can't blame the wealthy white minority, because he expropriated their land and wealth, and trying to call the opposition "terrorists" is just pathetic. He'd better be sure the military is thoroughly on his side, otherwise he could be looking at a coup.

Posted Without (much) Comment:

From Atrios:

Things Which Make Me Want To Shoot People In The Face

People who bitch about other peoples' blogrolls who don't even have a blogroll on their main page, but just a link to one.

From terrence:

The thing is, I do have a blogroll on my front page. It’s the dropdown list right under the ad-strip, labeled “Blogs Linking Here,” but I’m guessing Duncan didn’t hand around long enough to notice it. It needs to be updated, mind you — some blogs need to be added, and some that no longer exist need to be removed — but it’s there. Always has been. Then again, maybe he did notice it, and I just have the wrong kind of blogroll.

The funny thing is that I put it there as a compromise. Because of an advertising network I’m on, I need to have a front page blogroll of progressive blogs. However, My blogroll (blogrolls, actually, since I broke it out into categories) had gotten so long that readers complained that the blog was taking too long to load, and asked me to move it to a separate page. (Plus my host was recommending I do something about the amount of server requests it was generating.)

So, as a compromise, I moved all but one blogroll, to another page, and put up a reciprocal blogroll, of progressive blogs that link back to this one. That means you won’t find many of the “usual suspects” on it.

Anyway, it’s good for a laugh if nothing else. The worst he can do is send loads of traffic my way for a day or so, and those visitors will probably hang around about as long as he did and never return. Which is fine by me. Really.

Atrios is getting a little testy about this, isn't he?

Terrance on the Purge... of Orcinus? (Plus, more on the A-List and Iran)

Terrance over at the Republic of T has a really great entry on the whole blogroll purge debacle.

One thing he brings up that I hadn't noticed: apparently Dave Neiwert's Orcinus was one of the purged blogs.

May I be the first to say what the HELL? The work Neiwert's done on right-wing eliminationism and quasi-fascism practically justifies Blogspot! It's one of the main sites I point to in real life when I'm talking about the possibilities of blogs! Sure, I can see forgetting to add it. Inertia is a vile and terrible thing. But who on earth would make the conscious, baffling choice to excise it from an existing blogroll?

In any case, my own inertia has abated enough to add both "Republic of T" and the long-overdue "Orcinus" to my own roll.

As for the "A-list", I have to admit that aside from everything else, I'm both disappointed and concerned that as their quest for influence intensifies, many seem to have become more and more myopic and political. Yes, Abu Gonzalez is a turd. Sorry, but there are more important things going on in the world right now.

Iran, for instance.

Few of the A-Listers seem to even notice or care about that.

I mean, maybe somebody can explain to me how the right going hog-wild over this issue and the big progressives seemingly ignoring it (according to Technorati and Google blog search, anyway) will actually help keep the west out of Iran? Craig Murray should be plastered across half of the progressive blogosphere, and instead we get Friedman Units, babble about "Liebercrats" that carefully ignores actual foreign policy, and Abu Freaking Gonzalez everywhere.

(With some exceptions. The Huffington Post appears to be on it, for example, even mentioning Murray.)

Yes, I know that Kos has complained that he can't be all things to all people. Sorry, Markos, but the people who want to "crash the gates" need to actually care about what government does first.

After seeing the way that Iran has been neglected? I'm no longer convinced that the "A-list" really does care anymore.

(This is not to say that people over at Daily Kos haven't addressed the issue. There's a good diary here on it by Meteor Blades, for example. But Meteor Blades isn't the name on the masthead.)

Can a Nation-State Jump the Shark?

Ok, while I'm really not fond of how the UK has handled this situation, and I do think that the benefit of the doubt exists about whether the British soldiers were in Iranian waters, and I can even see them admitting it...

...getting hostage Faye Turner to call the war in Iraq a crime or a mistake or whatever is just dumb. It ruins your credibility, guys, and makes it seem like you have a pistol pointed at the head of the poor woman while she's writing, even if you don't.

Seriously, rethink the overreach, or this is only going to get worse.

More on the Iranians and the Sailors

By all accounts they're doing well enough, although it's unlikely that they're going anywhere soon. They were going to release one sailor, the sole woman, but it's been bogged down over the question of whether the Brits were in Iranian waters. Considering that's the entire legal question here, I doubt either side is going to easily back down on it.

The UK is complaining about the broadcasting of the prisoners on Iranian television. They're citing the same prohibitions on "exposing prisoners to national curiosity" that the Americans used against the Iraqis a while back. Two problems with that: Iran is not in a state of war with the UK, and the Coalition of the Willing has a very nasty habit of doing the same damned thing.

(Remember Saddam getting his teeth checked on TV? Because I do. Not a leg to stand on.)

As for exactly where all this happened, in Iraqi waters or Iranian, things are getting trickier. The Brits have used GPS devices to show that they were on the Iraqi side of a "notional line" extending from the Shatt-al-Arab waterway. The Iranians disagree, but their stated coordinates appear to be shifting around somewhat, raising questions about their credibility. The problem is that according to Craig Murray, that "notional line" may not be legitimate after all- that the Iranians and Iraqis had never set down exactly WHERE the line was, and wherever it is, it's probably not there:

The British Government has published a map showing the coordinates of the incident, well within an Iran/Iraq maritime border. The mainstream media and even the blogosphere has bought this hook, line and sinker.

But there are two colossal problems.

A) The Iran/Iraq maritime boundary shown on the British government map does not exist. It has been drawn up by the British Government. Only Iraq and Iran can agree their bilateral boundary, and they never have done this in the Gulf, only inside the Shatt because there it is the land border too. This published boundary is a fake with no legal force.

B) Accepting the British coordinates for the position of both HMS Cornwall and the incident, both were closer to Iranian land than Iraqi land. Go on, print out the map and measure it. Which underlines the point that the British produced border is not a reliable one.

None of which changes the fact that the Iranians, having made their point, should have handed back the captives immediately. I pray they do so before this thing spirals out of control. But by producing a fake map of the Iran/Iraq boundary, notably unfavourable to Iran, we can only harden the Iranian position.

Can't disagree with this one bit.

Murray, by the way, has several other excellent posts on this.

Now, as for what's REALLY going on... I'm with Murray when he says that both sides are "acting like idiots". The Iranians should have released the soldiers by now; persisting in holding them only ratchets up the tension. Yes, the UK may spin it as a victory if they're released, but outside of Washington and a small bit of London, who'd buy it?

The UK, in turn, shouldn't be trying to spin the border, should have known in the first place that doing incredibly provocative activities in disputed waters is dodgy at best, and should make it clear that this isn't part of a hunt for a bombing campaign's casus belli, as that will make Iran dig in their heels further.

As to where this goes... I still think the UK is floundering somewhat. If Murray's points don't get out into the wider media, they might buy the UK's line. Since he was already mentioned on the BBC site, though, I think that cat's well out of the bag. I don't think going to the UN will help much; I'm sure they'll have backing from the US, but Russian and China are going to be a much harder sell, considering Iranian oil and China's paranoia about national sovereignty. They might get a resolution, but it'll be watered down.

More as it develops.

(Fixed some issues.)

More Sanctions for Iran

If the Iranian seizure of British sailors was intended to try to dissuade the UN from sanctions, it didn't work: more sanctions have been placed on Iran. The sanctions aren't, (according to the Herald Tribune), that much worse than the ones that were already there, but the resolution was unanimous, suggesting that any attempt to play the security council against itself is unlikely to be effective.

For its part, Iran has been defiant, calling the sanctions "unlawful and unjustifiable" and vowing that they will have no effect on its nascent nuclear program. That may be true, but it may also be a show of bluster for the cameras and to keep spirits high back home. Since the nuclear program appears to be very popular with the Iranian public, that wouldn't surprise me.

More as this develops, but in the meantime: you folks know as well as I do that Ahmadinejad's Visa got scuttled. If THAT doesn't stink of this White House, what does?

Iran says Soldiers Admitted to Trespassing in Iranian Waters

Link on CNN. The British Ministry of Defense isn't backing up the claim, although as we've seen, the Brits have been backing down a little on this question.

Oh, and what the hell is Time babbling about? Their "analysis" of the case essentially comes down to "Iran kidnaps soldiers because they're all horrible nationalist bastards and wanted to "send a message" to the US, gangland-style.

Yes, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps is an outfit under the direct control of Ayatollah Khamenei. That doesn't make them suicidally aggressive, especially with how relatively pragmatic Khamenei has shown himself to be over the years. The article itself even admits that "within Tehran political circles [the IRGC commander] is seen as pragmatic" as well; complaining about his extremist public pronouncements without, uh, actually providing any doesn't do wonders for your case, guys. That just implies that the public extremism is a front for more pragmatic leadership.

(But, of course, you never see that in the third world, right?)

I'm still not sure why the IRGC seized these guys, and where they were operating. I really do get the sense that they were in disputed waters, and I take Craig Murray's comments seriously; the Brits may be at fault in this case. Iran may well be "sending a message", too, using completely blameless troops. We need more than "sources" and veiled suggestion, however to determine what's actually going on.

Turkey to Move into Kurdistan?

One of the things I had always been concerned about regarding the Iraq war is the de-facto independence of the Kurds. I had thought that the Kurds in Iran and Turkey may move to join their newly freed counterparts in Iraq, with dire and violent consequences. A nightmare scenario for me has always been Turkey invading Iraq, as it would potentially pit the United States against Turkey and likely tear NATO (and Europe) apart.

If this is true, it looks like this may be finally happening. The Americans are doing their best to head it off--at least as much as a government supporting ANOTHER Kurdish insurgency in Iran actually can--but whether they'll succeed is still very much in question.

Keep watching, folks. This could be a bumpy weekend.

Hat tip to, yes, a diary at DailyKos- specifically Turkana

Finally, a Good Progressive Take on the Iran Thing

Courtesy of former British Ambassador Craig Murray:

The capture of British Marines by Iran has happened before, then on the Shatt-al-Arab waterway. It will doubtless be used by those seeking to bang the war drum against Iran, though I imagine it will be fairly quickly resolved.

Before people get too carried away, the following is worth bearing in mind. I write as a former Head of the Maritime Section of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office.

The Iranians claimed the British soldiers had strayed into Iranian territorial waters. If they had, then the Iranians had every right to detain them for questioning.

The difficulty is that the maritime delimitation in the North West of the Persian Gulf, between Iraq, Kuwait and Iran, has never been resolved. It is not therefore a question of just checking your GPS to see where you are. This is a perfectly legitimate dispute, in which nobody is particularly at fault. Lateral maritime boundaries from a coastal border point are intensely complicated things, especially where islands and coastal banks become a factor.

Disputes are not unusual. I was personally heavily involved in negotiating British maritime boundaries with Ireland, France and Denmark just ten years ago, and not all our own boundaries are resolved even now. There is nothing outlandish about Iranian claims, and we have no right in law to be boarding Iranian or other shipping in what may well be Iranian waters.

The UN Convention on the Law of The Sea carries a heavy presumption on the right of commercial vessels to "innocent passage", especially through straits like Hormuz and in both territorial and international waters. You probably won't read this elsewhere in these jingoistic times but, in international law, we are very probably in the wrong. As long as the Iranians neither mistreat our Marines nor wilfully detain them too long, they have the right.

Bolding mine. Nothing to disagree with here. Indicting commercial vessels is always sort of a tricky subject, and as I said, the question of territorial waters on that particular waterway is an especially tricky one. Provided the sailors aren't harmed, Iran may well be in the clear on this.

Not exactly what Washington wants to hear, or the people who think that 300 was a strategic blueprint, but regardless, it's a possibility.

The Possibility of British Incursion in Iranian Waters

Ah, things are becoming a bit clearer. I was right to suspect that the charges against the British soldiers would be incursion into Iranian waters, especially considering that disputes over the border between Iranian and Iraqi waters in the Shatt-al-Arab was the genesis of the Iran-Iraq war.

If the Brits really were seizing vessels in Iranian waters, or using Iranian waters to do so, then all of a sudden the Casus Belli has reversed itself- the Brits have (arguably) committed an act of war against the Iranians, instead of the other way around.

(That is, of course, assuming that the invasion of an Iranian consulate by American forces a while back wasn't already. The U.S. had a figleaf there, claiming that it wasn't really an embassy so it didn't count, but I somehow doubt they'd accept that argument were it the other way around.)

So, the question being raised by the right wingers (if not the progressives; where the hell ARE they on this issue?) is "why now?" That's actually a good question, but not quite for the reason you'd think, assuming it's not just a coincidence.

According to the linked story, today's a holiday in Iran; that's why it's been tough to get in touch with anybody in Iran today. Now, that might mean that the Iranians timed this deliberately so that they wouldn't have to diplomatically respond to the inevitable firestorm of criticism.

Another possibility that I haven't seen discussed, though, is that it's the Brits taking advantage of this. If they provoke a response today, then they get the opportunity to get out in front on this issue- to condition the world media's response, and set the idea into the public's head that they were operating in Iraqi waters, not Iranian. By the time the Iranians respond, the UK (and, of course, the United States) firmly control the perception of who is in the wrong and who is in the right on this. By Monday, Iran is an international pariah.

Either is possible. The latter is somewhat Machiavellian, but that doesn't make it impossible, just a little less likely.

More as this develops. After all, somebody's gotta write on this who isn't baying for Persian blood.

How to achieve "Victory" in Iran

Tami asks, as a reaction to the casus belli issue, what exactly "victory" would be in a conflict with Iran and how it's possible with the enormous problems the U.S. Army is facing right now.

It's a good question. The answer is that "victory" can end up being subjective, and the perception of how to get there even more so. People disagree about how to achieve victory; one side may be right, another may be wrong, but there's still going to be disagreement.

In the case of Iran, the Powers That Be in DoD clearly still believe that victory is possible from the air, and from the sea. Thing is, it's only the U.S. Army that's truly bogged down in Iraq and Afghanistan. The other branches are, if anything, somewhat underutilized right now.

(Air and sea power is pretty useless in fighting an urban insurgency.)

Here's the strategic breakdown. The key issue with Iran is whether it can be cowed into capitulation, or humiliated into a domestic revolution. Either way, the Iranian nuclear threat is diminished: in the former case, the mullahs are disarmed enough that US (and Israeli) strategic preeminence in the region is unquestioned, and in the latter case, the theory is that more democratic, pro-Western forces than the Mullahs would succeed in a revolution, and the US (and Israel) retains regional strategic supremacy. Humiliation would provoke the revolution, because it would show how weak the leadership actually is, and others would seize the opportunity.

The American neoconservatives have always been of the opinion that this is possible, and that air power can do this, whether land-based (the Air Force) or sea-based (the Navy). Blow up enough of the infrastructure that the Mullahs depend on, and the people will revolt, because they don't hate the United States anywhere near as much as their government masters do, or as much as they hate said masters themselves. A revolution will take place again in Iran, but this time, it'll be a revolution by supposedly pro-western elements, such as Mujahedin-e Khalq (MEK), which they've been careful to avoid applying the "terrorist" label to. They'll then open up the country to American troops and American influence.

That's how the United States would, theoretically, win without ground power, and how they could win with their forces in Iraq still bogged down.

Of course, a lot could go wrong. There are a ton of assumptions there. I don't agree with a lot of them, principally the idea that bombing the crap out of Tehran would foment an anti-Mullah revolution instead of a "rally 'round the flag" effect. It's never been quite clear why they think this would be the case, beyond the most powerful Orientalism the world has seen since the sunset of the British Empire. It's contradicted by America's own experiences and any objective historical analysis of the region.

Nonetheless, Tami, that's how they think they'd win.

God help us all.

"Weird how selling out involves no money."

Quick reminder, on the off chance that Duncan was serious:

the big money in politics comes after you've "sold out", not during.

This sort of thing makes me miss 2002.

Casus Belli

One of the big questions about any upcoming American attack on Iran is the justification they'd use for it. They need a casus belli.

They now have it.

My guess is that there's more going on here than we're reading in the news. There is nothing in the Guardian or in, from what I've seen, any other papers about why Iran did what they did. Certainly the Iranian commanders aren't dumb enough to think that there wouldn't be repercussions for this activity, so there would have to be a justification from the Iranian side.

(Judging by how touchy they are about it, I'd imagine that the British were either acting on the Iranian side of the Shatt-al-Arab river, or interdicting ships headed to Iraq from Iran, or both. The Royal Navy apparently insists they were in Iraqi waters. They'd probably do that no matter what, not being blithering idiots themselves, so I don't find that entirely credible.)

(I know that if I were looking to set up a casus belli by deliberately provoking the Iranians, this would probably be how I'd do it.)

In any case, for those out there panting at the thought of getting to attack Iran, might I remind you that you already have two wars that you haven't won yet? I'd suggest dealing with them before opening up a third front, especially when one of those (Iraq) will become a nightmarish insurgent hell the second the bombs drop on Tehran.

Halliburton Killed My Cat!

I finished "Imperial Life in the Emerald City", and it is as thorough an indictment of the Republicans and their corporate allies as you could ask for.

I had always believed that the problem with the occupation--other than its central goals--was that loyal, ideological staffers are the worst people you could ask to do the difficult and tricky work of reconstruction. Chandrasekaran's book, however, showed that it was even worse than that- that qualified people were being turned away and Halliburton was using its political connections to get away with murder.

I didn't know how true that latter assertion was.

I only found out when I read the following passage. It's the one that affected me the most out of perhaps all of them, and if you're the type to "catblog", I doubt you'll disagree.

After Uday's menagerie was moved into Baghdad's zoo, most CPA staffers assumed that humans were the only species in the green Zone, save for the bomb-sniffing dogs and the odd feral cat skittering among the housing trailers. The CPA's senior adviser to the Ministry of Environment pronounce the Emerald City a wasteland, devoid of wildlife.

Alex Dehgan knew better. He was a biologist who had spent three years observing animals in the wild. Every time he walked around the Green Zone, he kept his eyes peeled. He saw bats over the pool at night, barn owls in palm trees, and desert foxes in remote corners of the palace garden. "The Green Zone was filled with life, he said. "it was beautiful, and it seemed like everyone in the Green Zone was unaware of them like they were unaware of many other things."

The other humans did notice the cats--and kittens--scampering in the garden and the trailer parks. Staffers named them and played with them during breaks. They even stole cartons of milk and cheese from the dining hall for their newfound companions.

When Halliburton managers discovered the pets in their midst, they asked the marines guarding the palace to shoot the cats on sight lest they spread illnesses.

Dehgan deemed it bad science. "The danger of disease was probably infinitesimally small,", he said. "this wasn't done with any thought to the psychological value that these cats provided."

When the execution orders were announced, CPA staffers saved their favorites, hiding them in trailers, in bathrooms, in the pool house. David Gompert, Bremer's security adviser, kept a cat he named Mickey in his palace office. Mickey was watched over by Gompert's security detail, but he still managed to chew through several sensitive documents.

The Halliburton cat killers finally got wise to the asylum strategy and deployed Filipino contract workers on a hunt-and-kill mission. They opened every trailer while the occupants were at work and rounded up every cat they found.

One night in June, a woman stood wailing outside her trailer. She was due to ship out in two days and had taken her cat to a veterinarian for the necessary shots for entrance to Aemrican. Whens he returned to her room, she found a note from the death squad informing her that her cat had been seized because it was against the rules to house animals in the trailers.

"They killed my pet," she sobbed. "I hate them."

She ain't the only one. Halliburton and it's CPA allies wouldn't listen to an mammalian biologist (Dehgan) because he had the audacity to be based out of the State Department. Instead, they issued a senseless and cruel order, and when people defied it, instead of approaching the owners and coming to a solution, they dispassionately and cowardly crept into peoples homes and killed their cats.

So just remember, folks, the next time you see a cute picture of a kitty on your favorite blog, that were it up to Halliburton, they'd conjure some bullshit excuse, and then they'd take the thing out back and blow its adorable little brains out. And why? Because they know the president, and that's all the authority and expertise they need.

And Now For Something Completely Different

We present to you:

Surfing Rodents



Discuss amongst yourselves. And thank Bitch Ph.D for the link.

Welcome to the Green Zone, Check Your Brain at the Door

I've finally gained the opportunity to read Rajiv Chandrasekaran's Imperial Life in the Emerald Kingdom. I'm only a few chapters in, but already it's horrifying.

More than that, though, it's educational. While everybody is aware that there was little in the way of reconstruction plans, Chandrasekaran is one of the first to highlight the idea that Garner (and to a lesser extent Bremer) were set up to fail. The reason why? That old villian Ahmed Chalabi. The office of the Vice President and the neocons at DoD were absolutely intent on handing over power to Chalabi, but knew that the CIA and State (as well as the old hands at DoD) would vigorously fight the idea. Any attempt to hand over control to Chalabi had to be done through the back door, so they deliberately hobbled Garner and the ORHA, with the hopes that in desperation they'd turn to Chalabi and his exiles for support. That would (so the theory went) legitimize Chalabi and set him up to be the logical successor to Garner.

That, uh, didn't work. Both because Chalabi was completely unsuited to the job and openly mocked in most of Iraq, and because making it happen meant that they had to systematically remove almost every qualified applicant for work in Iraq, because they were either familiar with Chalabi and didn't trust him, or were too close to State and the CIA, or weren't sufficiently loyal enough to the Republican party.

Meanwhile, junior Republican congressional staffers got to be big cheeses in Iraq, and bring that unique brand of governing incompetence that you can only really get from doctrinaire Republicans to the people of Iraq.

Lucky them.

On Khalid Sheikh Mohammed

So supposedly the guy confessed to being the mastermind behind everything Al Qaeda has done, if not everything everybody who doesn't like the United States has done, ever.

That confession came after a long stint at Gitmo and another unnamed secret CIA prison. He had no access to lawyers, and enjoyed plenty of waterboarding and other pleasant forms of "coercion" we've probably never heard of.

I trust I don't have to explain to you folks why I find that a little questionable? Sketchy? Dodgy, perhaps? Sure, he almost certainly had a lot to do with 9/11, but we knew that before he started getting (almost) drowned for days on end.

All this is going to prove is that nobody outside the Republican party trusts the US government anymore.

No, Really, This Time It's Gonna Work!

Color me skeptical about the idea that the surge is working. Robert Kagan argues that his brother's vaunted "surge" is leading to greater security. What's it based on, you ask? A pair of Iraqi bloggers notorious for toeing the Bush administration line (they're Pajamas bloggers, summing THAT up), Brian Williams not being quite so afraid, and "cracks in the Shiite governing coalition".

Er, yeah.

Call me when Riverbend backs any of this up. I'm not going to be holding my breath waiting, though.

The Topic That Shall Not Rear Its Head

Has reared its head over on Eschaton, where we see Atrios crying foul over the idea that somebody might take offence to a post where he says, essentially, that he doesn't link to your blog because it SUCKS.

(Yes, that's actually the name of the post. "Why your blog sucks".)

Now, I'm pretty confident that Atrios won't read this, as I don't update enough or in the right "Glenn Greenwald" fashion, and have committed the (previously unstated) unpardonable sin of having light text on a dark background.

(I wonder how he handled blackboards as a former academic, but I digress.)

Still, were he to read this, I'd suggest a few points:

#1: Every blogger, no matter how well read, tends to suffer from "Ted Barlow syndrome"; the belief that nothing you say or do or write matters. I think it's a bit of a misnomer, in that almost EVERYBODY suffers from this problem- with bloggers its just a little more apparent because they actually do have a venue for what they're saying. This is why people complain about not being read, but the alternative is potentially talented writers simply stopping entirely.

Like, well, Ted Barlow.

#2: He needs to learn himself some Pagerank. Yes, blogrolls matter.

#3: He needs to learn himself some manners. Whether or not you agree that blogrolls are an important community- and identity-building tool, I think everybody can agree this is kind of a bad move. Telling people that are ostensibly on the same side as you "Go away, your blog sucks and you suck for writing it" is pretty goddamned wrongheaded no matter how you look at it.

(Individual arguments and opinions? Sure. Go nuts. But a generalized "piss off and die?")

#4: He's starting to sound a little like a winger. Not in his opinions, but in how he's presenting them. In both of the pieces I linked to, he didn't quote a single word of the critical blogs that he's supposedly responding to. Indeed, the "your blog sucks" posting features such a lovely bit of strawman argumentation that it would make a Fox News anchor weep:

7) An elite cabal of bloggers, all on the Hillary Clinton for President campaign payroll, have conspired to suppress your original voice by any means necessary, including the implementation of very elitist and anti-democratic peer review systems such as the open posting and "recommended diary" system at Daily Kos. This is certainly an interesting theory, and one which several blogs seem to be devoted to exploring, but absent further evidence you might want to look for alternative explanations.

Gimme a break. If Atrios wants to respond to critics like skippy and Mary Scott O'Connor, then by all means, I recommend that he do so. Both have put forward excellent arguments about the nature of blogrolling and of the concept of a "blogosphere" itself that deserve to be engaged seriously and honestly. Screwing around trying to be funny is just insulting. It's also more than a little sad: it smacks of an affectation of not caring that is contradicted by the existence of the posts themselves.

Oh, and as for #5?

If you think skippy or MSOC's stuff on the blogrolling controversy is a reason why either blog "sucks", you're out to lunch. O'Connor's entry on Kos was one of the best, most savage pieces I'd read in a good while, and skippy's entries on this issue have been consistently interesting and (unlike "your blog sucks") often really funny.

Of course, I might just think this because my blog sucks, along with everybody else that Atrios tossed overboard.

Somehow, though, I think I'll continue to "look for alternate explanations".

The Cripple's Crusade

People had been asking, almost from the first day the "surge" was announced, where the soldiers were going to come from. After all, the U.S. Army and National Guards have been practically crippled by the constant tours in Iraq. Who would be sent? There was nobody else to send.

Now we know.

The United States is sending its wounded to battle.

As the military scrambles to pour more soldiers into Iraq, a unit of the Army's 3rd Infantry Division at Fort Benning, Ga., is deploying troops with serious injuries and other medical problems, including GIs who doctors have said are medically unfit for battle. Some are too injured to wear their body armor, according to medical records.

On Feb. 15, Master Sgt. Jenkins and 74 other soldiers with medical conditions from the 3rd Division's 3rd Brigade were summoned to a meeting with the division surgeon and brigade surgeon. These are the men responsible for handling each soldier's "physical profile," an Army document that lists for commanders an injured soldier's physical limitations because of medical problems -- from being unable to fire a weapon to the inability to move and dive in three-to-five-second increments to avoid enemy fire. Jenkins and other soldiers claim that the division and brigade surgeons summarily downgraded soldiers' profiles, without even a medical exam, in order to deploy them to Iraq. It is a claim division officials deny.

Can we believe these denials of a massive "reevaluation" on Feb. 15? Well, here's one case:

One female soldier with psychiatric issues and a spine problem has been in the Army for nearly 20 years. "My [health] is deteriorating," she said over dinner at a restaurant near Fort Benning. "My spine is separating. I can't carry gear." Her medical records include the note "unable to deploy overseas." Her status was also reviewed on Feb. 15. And she has been ordered to Iraq this week.

Nothing about this is really new. Iraq has forced down recruitment standards across the board: people who were previously seen as too old, too mentally challenged, or too uneducated for service are being actively recruited. A draft is (currently) politically impossible, as is taking in minors, so this is one of the few options left to them to keep the numbers up.

Of course, as TPM points out, this could be an isolated incident. I personally doubt it, though. What it is is one more symptom of a military slowly devouring itself to fight Bush's war.

Somewhere in Pakistan, Osama just keeps on laughing.

Progressives and Genre Fiction?

I realize that the attempts to try to turn the movie 300 into some kind of paen to Bush's fight against the Islamic Hordes is a little nauseating, and maybe I'm a little biased on this...

but what is with progressives being (and pardon my language) complete dicks about genre fiction?

The only thing sadder than arrested development is those moaning about it inside the armor of their own proud ignorance.

Honestly, anybody who actually writes "graphic...ahem... novels" deserves a good swift kick in the behind.

(And no, you're not excused either, James. Trying to burnish anti-conservative cred by taking cheap shots at Captain America is just ludicrous. The arc that led up to his demise, apparently, featured political positions on his behalf that would probably cause Rush Limbaugh's head to explode.)

You Gotta Be Kidding, Right?

I realize that Bush is almost certainly going to pardon Libby when his two years are up. Fine. That's the way the game works.

That said, why on earth is there even a debate over whether he should pardon him now?

If some people imagined a verdict in the criminal trial of I. Lewis Libby Jr. would calm the political passions surrounding his fate, they may have forgotten two words with a combustible history: presidential pardon.

The 11 jurors had barely pronounced Mr. Libby guilty of obstruction of justice and perjury on Tuesday when a new donnybrook broke out.

“Now President Bush must pledge not to pardon Libby for his criminal conduct,” declared Senator Harry Reid, Democrat of Nevada and the majority leader, taking a stance echoed by other Congressional Democrats, some editorial writers and bloggers on the left.

From the right came a Wednesday editorial in The Wall Street Journal, which thundered that “the time for a pardon is now,” a point of view shared by The Weekly Standard, National Review and conservative admirers and friends of Mr. Libby. Many of the calls for his pardon demanded immediate action, instead of a wait for appeals to wend their way through the courts.

Of course he shouldn't be pardoned. There no question of his guilt, and this "underlying crime" stuff is absolutely meaningless, as the whole point of having perjury as a crime is because perjury irretrievably muddies the waters on that count. Getting away with crime would be trivial if people could lie with impunity, as you could easily compel witnesses to lie their faces off for your benefit.

Besides, the question about an underlying "crime" is unimportant compared to the question of whether there was an underlying act that could have led to criminal prosecution were there not perjury involved. After all, no act is technically a crime until you are convicted of it. That's the distinction between Clinton and Libby- Clinton lied about an entirely legal act (getting a hummer at the office) whereas Libby lied about endangering the entire extended espionage network of someone under non-official cover.

(And it's not even clear that Clinton perjured himself. He mainly split hairs over the definition of "sex".)

I know that the conservatives want to stand by their man. I also know that the right to pardon rests with a president for good reason. Still, this is just ludicrous. There's no grounds for pardon either legally, morally or politically. If the case was decided poorly, that may be grounds for an appeal, but if Bush simply scoops up Libby and says "nah, I don't like that result", then why bother with the whole thing? Might as well just parade the accused in front of him, and decide whether they live or die by a thumbs up/thumbs down system.

Then again, conservatives seem awfully fond of Rome. Maybe there's a connection there?

So much for Libby

Guilty on 4 of 5 charges.