Subterranean Homepage News

March 28, 2003 - (Last week's weblog)

Gone for the weekend. I think these are the best sources:

Weekend links: Breaking war news

The Agonist -- Incoming details, real-time blogging by one man. Very busy; try the imrror sites: agonist.got.net, agonist.rangebroadband.com, agonist.imaginot.com
BBC Reporters Log -- 24/7 reports
The Command Post -- group blogging of war headlines
Warblogs:cc

Media Map of Iraq: Where the journalists are
Forces: U.S. & Coalition/Casualties (CNN)
Iraq Body Count
Email to the troops
Music for the troops
Books for soldiers

Google news
CNN
Washington Post
New York Times
National Public Radio
Guardian UK Iraq page
Sydney (Australia) Morning Herald
Iraq latest: At-a-glance from the BBC.
BBC news front, Iraq front.
SkyNews

Iraq media dossier; Radio Netherlands tracks the changing state of Iraqi media
Lou Josephs: Monitoring Iraqi media. He's terse.
MXStream War Portal - Streams the BBC Baghdad webcam, Al-Jazeera TV and other
Short wave
Live, unedited video feeds from Reuters
Information Clearing House: Live 24 hour news coverage from BBC 24, world radio news index.
Comfm: Worldwide radio and tv portal

The Lebanon Daily Star
DEBKAfile - Israel
Kuwait News Agency. Very slow.
Swissinfo
War in Iraq from Radio Free Europe/ Radio Liberty.
Baghdad Headline News from HomeTownFreePress
Arab News (Saudi Arabia)
Al Bawaba - (Jordan)
IRNA - (Islamic Republic News Agency - Iran)
Al-Jazeerah - (Qatar)

IraqWar.info: Operation Iraqi Freedom
Electronic Iraq: Breaking news links from unusual sources on the left side of the page.
Back to Iraq 2.0: Independent journalist Christopher Allbritton is trying to get into Iraq.
Cursor.org has Middle East media links on the left side of the page.
Popdex's War On Iraq
Electronic Iraq
Iraq Peace Team Diaries
Peace Blogs
I Want Media watches war coverage.

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Kathem El Saher and American singer Lenny Kravitz sing for peace: Al Bawaba's take on the story barely mentions Kravitz, gives good info on Kathem, who's taking flak for touring in the U.S. As I mentioned Tuesday, you can stream and download it at Rock The Vote.

The Al-Jazeera tapes we haven't seen: From arabnews.com.

Where you are determines which war you see on your TV:

Arab World Is Seeing War Far Differently: What the Arab world is seeing. Washington Post.

World and America watching different wars: Reporter is "embedded" with a family in Cairo. Christian Science Monitor.

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Great White To Perform At Tribute For Late Guitarist Ty Longley. From MTVm

Great White will perform one song at an April 29 benefit at the Key Club in West Hollywood for the Ty Longley Memorial Fund. The fund, established by Longley's parents, will provide financial assistance to the late guitarist's unborn child, victim relief funds and students seeking art scholarships.

Other bands on the lineup include '80s hair metal band XYZ and 5 Cent Shine, which Longley was in before he joined Great White. Other national acts will be announced, according to Great White's manager, who added that the surviving bandmembers have no other plans to play together in the near future.

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Wacky Voices of Dissent urges protestors to put some thought into the content of the signs they'll carry in demonstrations. The page, at Spaz Out New York, is a hoot. Coincidentally, The Lemon debuted with a joke photo of protestors with essay-length signs captioned, "A group of protesters attempts to form a coherant (sic) message." (Yesterday, we pointed to the smart and and funny war edition of The Onion; today, The Lemon -- opposite but unequal.)
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Bombs Can't Bust Saddam Bunker, Builder Says:

BERLIN (Reuters) - The German architect of one of Saddam Hussein (news - web sites)'s main bunkers in Baghdad said on Friday the Iraqi leader can survive anything short of a direct hit with a nuclear bomb if he stays within its four-feet-thick walls.

More on the $90 million luxury shelter from the New York Post:

Bedrooms were fitted with hand-woven rugs. Marble tiles were laid on bathroom floors, and mother-of-pearl toilet-roll holders were installed.

Light switches through the bunker are gold-plated. There's also a swimming pool, a gourmet kitchen, a huge recreation room, an entertainment center and a nursery for Saddam's grandchildren and the children of his key generals.

But the showcase of the joint is Saddam's bedroom which has similarities to that of another famous dictator - Napoleon Bonaparte.

It has a tent-style, king-sized bed on a wood inlay frame. The bed linen is hand-woven silk and cotton, and the pillows are the finest duckling and gosling down.

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The Sound of Things to Come: I missed this at first. Thanks to J.D. for getting me out of the war and back into the cool... (NYT, reg.req)

Woody Norris aims the silvery plate at his quarry. A burly brunette 200 feet away stops dead in her tracks and peers around, befuddled. She has walked straight into the noise of a Brazilian rain forest -- then out again. Even in her shopping reverie, here among the haircutters and storefront tax-preparers and dubious Middle Eastern bistros, her senses inform her that she has just stepped through a discrete column of sound, a sharply demarcated beam of unexpected sound. ''Look at that,'' Norris mutters, chuckling as the lady turns around. ''She doesn't know what hit her.''

Norris is demonstrating something called HyperSonic Sound (HSS). The aluminum plate is connected to a CD player and an odd amplifier -- actually, a very odd and very new amplifier -- that directs sound much as a laser beam directs light. Over the past few years, mainly in secret, he has shown the device to more than 300 major companies, and it has slackened a lot of jaws. In December, the editors of Popular Science magazine bestowed upon HSS its grand prize for new inventions of 2002, choosing it over the ferociously hyped Segway scooter. It is no exaggeration to say that HSS represents the first revolution in acoustics since the loudspeaker was invented 78 years ago -- and perhaps only the second since pilgrims used ''whispering tubes'' to convey their dour messages.

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Former Senator and possible presidential candidate Gary Hart has a weblog. the headline, "Welcome to my blog" tops a paragraph of more traditional campaign rhetoric.
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Islamic hackers use Alaska teen's website to promote al-Qaida: From The Peninsula Clarion,

ANCHORAGE (AP) -- An extremist Islamic group hacked into an Internet bulletin board run by a Homer area high school student, turning it into an al-Qaida propaganda outpost calling for attacks on the United States in response to the war on Iraq.

More than 1,000 people used the portal since the information was posted over the weekend. The information had been removed by Tuesday morning, presumably to nest again in a few weeks on someone else's server.

The Islamic group has been moving its Internet site regularly for at least a year.

The brief brush with world events perplexed Garrett Johnson, 17, who set up the Web site in his spare time and works weekends at an Anchor Point service station. He hadn't checked his site in several days. The Arabic pages could no longer be found by the time he started getting calls Tuesday from East Coast reporters and the FBI.

... Still, he said, he'd been suspicious that something was going on. He'd set up the Web page as a community forum and chat room several months ago and was still adding features and writing code. He had five registered members, including him and his girlfriend. Then on Saturday two new members signed up, both from Saudi Arabia.

The site was run by the Center for Islamic Studies and Research, a group described as ''the mouthpiece of al-Qaida'' by Josh Devon, an analyst with the SITE Institute, a terrorism research group in Washington, D.C.

... ''This is one of al-Qaida's most important Web sites. Clearly the point is to recruit people to Jihad (holy war),'' Devon said. ''It regularly issues the al-Qaida leadership's latest communiques.''

Related: FBI to investigate Al-Jazeera Web hijack.
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March 27, 2003

"In Defense of Al-Jazeera": Al-Jazeera has come under fire in recent days for broadcasting photos and video footage that the violate American press customs. Yet the Qatar news organization finds a surprising defender -- Michael Moran, senior producer for special projects at MSNBC.com. He worked as the BBC’s U.S. affairs analyst in London from 1993-96 and shared a newsroom with the Arab journalists at the BBC:

LONDON, Oct. 18, 2001 — One day in April 1996, as I headed for my desk in the newsroom at BBC Television Centre, I noticed an odd gathering of journalists in the space beside ours — the newsroom of BBC Arabic Television. There were tear-streaked faces, hugs among staff members and anger as the 250 journalists were told that the network, a BBC partnership with a Saudi company, would be shut down because the Saudis tried to censor a documentary on executions in their puritanical country. It was a devastating defeat for a brave group of journalists.

FOR MANY of BBC Arabic’s staff, that day marked the death of a long-held dream: uncensored news for the Middle East, reports shorn of the crazy conspiracy theories, anti-Israel sentiments and sniveling praise for venal regimes that is standard fare on state-controlled broadcast networks from Algiers to Islamabad.

... From the ashes of BBC Arabic rose al-Jazeera, a satellite channel funded by the Emir of Qatar and other Arab moderates who had recognized during BBC Arabic’s short life that the long-term interests of Islam would be served best by truth rather than censorship.

Note from The Agonist: "12:06 EST News on al Jezeera domain is that the 'domain' is no longer under their control." It's been hacked: Hackers Put U.S. Flag on Al-Jazeera Site.

They may think they're being "patriotic," but the script kiddies are sending an ominous message to the Arab world about what to expect from Americans.
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British troops prefer Iraqi boots to Her Majesty's standard issue:

NEAR BASRA (AFP) - British soldiers have been scavenging the debris of war for Iraqi army boots because the British army variety are disintegrating in the hot desert sun.

Did Lawrence of Arabia have this problem? The British have in the past colonized so many hot countries, it's surprising their army would deply in the desert wearing cold-climate boots.
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Long war, short war: The Washington Post reports today, War Could Last Months, Officers Say.

Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld is taking heat for the war not being already over, but only Vice President Dick Cheney actually promised a cakewalk. The Sunday before it all started, he did the rounds of the talk shows. Here's an excerpt from Meet the Press on March 16:

MR. RUSSERT: If your analysis is not correct, and we’re not treated as liberators, but as conquerors, and the Iraqis begin to resist, particularly in Baghdad, do you think the American people are prepared for a long, costly, and bloody battle with significant American casualties?

VICE PRES. CHENEY: Well, I don’t think it’s likely to unfold that way, Tim, because I really do believe that we will be greeted as liberators. I’ve talked with a lot of Iraqis in the last several months myself, had them to the White House. The president and I have met with them, various groups and individuals, people who have devoted their lives from the outside to trying to change things inside Iraq. And like Kanan Makiya who’s a professor at Brandeis, but an Iraqi, he’s written great books about the subject, knows the country intimately, and is a part of the democratic opposition and resistance. The read we get on the people of Iraq is there is no question but what they want to the get rid of Saddam Hussein and they will welcome as liberators the United States when we come to do that.

Related: Iraq rebuilding contracts awarded: Halliburton, Stevedoring Services of America get government contracts for early relief work. CNN/Money reports,

NEW YORK (CNN/Money) - The first contracts for rebuilding post-war Iraq have been awarded, and Vice President Dick Cheney's old employer, Halliburton Co., is one of the early winners.

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Reporters Without Borders condemns bombing of Iraqi national TV building in Baghdad. Maureen Dowd (Take Down Saddam TV, NYT, reg.req.) does not.
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Close to home: Metafilter reports,

Last August, Metafilter readers learned of the story of Laura Rothenberg, a student at Brown University who chronicled her battle with cystic fibrosis on NPR's Radio Diaries. Sadly, Laura died last week at age 22. NPR remembers her here and a moving tribute aired earlier this week on All Things Considered.

Freed detainees cite rewards, beatings: Ex-prisoners talk of treatment at Guantanamo Bay. The Boston Globe reported yesterday,

KABUL -- At the US detention center in Guantanamo Bay, prisoners who argue with guards are persecuted and sometimes beaten, while those who obey are rewarded with good food, clothes, hygiene, and even video games, according to interviews with the largest group of detainees set free so far from the main facility for Taliban and Al Qaeda suspects. ...

"How war reporting should be": That's how a Metafilter post describes the report by Robert Fisk of The Independent (UK) of the aftermath of the missile that smashed into the Baghdad market yesterday. The paper -- a broadsheet the size of The Journal or the N.Y. Times -- gave the entire front page today to the story.

Fisk, a friend of slain journalist Daniel Pearl, was asked by Democracy Now in an interview Tuesday (text and audio are here, text only is here)

"General Colin Powell said that foreign journalists should leave as the campaign of so-called ‘shock and awe’ is initiated- and it has started. Why have you chosen to remain in Baghdad?"

His answer:

Because I don’t work for Colin Powell, I work for a British newspaper called The Independent; if you read it, you’ll find that we are. It’s not the job of a journalist to snap to the attention of generals. I wrote a piece a couple of weeks ago in my newspaper saying that before the war began in Yugoslavia, the British Foreign Office urged journalists to leave and then said the British intelligence had uncovered a secret plot to take all the foreign reporters hostage in Belgrade. I decided this was a lie and stayed—and it was a lie.

... Just before the bombardment here, the British Foreign Office said that all journalists should leave because British intelligence had uncovered a plot by Saddam to take all journalists hostages, at which moment I knew I’d be safe to stay because it was, of course, the usual lie.

More of Fisk's dispatches are archived here. The Metafilter post has many comments attached (scroll down).

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Dublog, a stunning arts blog: Take a break here.

The Onion: Comic relief. War. Irreverence. Satire. Laugh.

March 26, 2003

Still the best: The Agonist; BBC Reporters Log

What to believe, what not to believe: By Mike Wendt of the Detroit Free Press. Here's a sample:

War is confusing, Facts change. But here are the rules I'm going to use in filtering the TV news:

1) If it comes from "senior military analysists" it means it's from the high paid retired generals and colonels hired by the networks as commentators, who in turn are being fed by their old pals in the Pentagon. Think of these retirees as cheerleaders.
2) If it's a report attributed to "high ranking defense department officials" it means it's a calculated leak aimed at demoralizing Saddam's loyalists that we should probably consider more propaganda than fact.
3) When they attribute news to "intelligence sources" that means somebody is speculating, guessing. "Preliminary information" means something is a rumor. When a Pentagon reporter answers an anchor's question with "we don't have visualization on that from here," know that he's really saying that there hasn't been a hand-out printed new release given him in the media center.
4) When the TV people go to a hire-a-general to work the maps and start drawing troop concentration locations and blue arrows and move around little tanks, understand they are simply filling time, "thumb sucking" as it's called, and those maps and movement projections mean absolutely nothing. Do you think that the real war plan and real deployment positions would be given away with such precision?
5) If it's a negative story and we're told "US officials are checking into those reports" you can probably assume they're true. ... (there's more)

Books For Soldiers: Here, U.S. military personnel and their families throughout the world can request books, you can browse the requests to see if your bookshelves have that title, and you'll find complete details of how to send them to them. The project started in 1991, during Gulf War I. Many that we looked into wanted "Anything!"

Peace song: Lenny Kravitz has teamed up with an Iraqi pop star to release an anti-war song. Kravitz recorded the song We Want Peace with Iraqi singer Kadim Al Sahir in Miami last week. You can stream and download it at Rock The Vote.

Anti-Spam E-Mail Company Changes Service Agreement: Yesterday we pointed to Dan Gillmor's discovery that Mailblocks' Terms of Service require that you accept third-party email form its sponsors. The anti-Spam firm's founder responded, saying the Terms were a mistake, and they don't require customers to accept spam.

March 25, 2003

It's official: An American woman to oversee Baghdad after war:

From the New York Times, U.S. Is Assembling a Civilian Team to Run Iraq

The United States is preparing to establish immediate sole control of postwar Iraq, initially without recourse to the United Nations, with a civilian administration under the direct command of the military, according to senior administration officials.

(Gen. Jay Garner's) team includes three regional coordinators and coordinators for reconstruction, civil administration and humanitarian assistance. They will oversee everything from emergency relief and refugees to long-term planning for roads, rail and waterways as well as economic development and weeding out senior officials of the ruling Baath Party of Saddam Hussein.

...Barbara Bodine, who was ambassador to Yemen in 2000 when the destroyer Cole was attacked, will serve in central Iraq.

Salam Pax, the Baghdad blogger first told the world this March 9, and we blogged it here March 10:

Blogger "Salam Pax" in Baghdad writes that the BBC World Service radio is reporting,

The plan calls for a northern and southern sector to be administered by two retired U.S. Army generals, sources said. A central sector, including Baghdad, will be administered by Barbara Bodine, a former U.S. ambassador to Yemen, the sources said.

CNN and Reuters also reported the story. Today's edition of The Age (in Australia, where it's already Monday) publishes:

Diplomat tipped to replace Saddam
March 10 2003
By David Wastell
London

An American diplomat with a taste for danger and an ambition to advance the cause of Arab women has been earmarked by the Pentagon to run Baghdad after the defeat of Saddam Hussein.

Barbara Bodine, 54, who in previous postings to the Middle East survived an aircraft hijacking, a 137-day embassy siege and risky negotiations with terrorists, has been asked to return to the city where she once served as a junior diplomat - this time as its interim governor until a new Iraqi government is set up. Ms Bodine was recalled from a sabbatical at the University of California last week to serve as the senior civilian on the Pentagon taskforce that is charged with the reconstruction of Iraq.

"Salam Pax" (which means "Peace Peace" in Arabic and Latin, respectively) links to Bodine's State Department bio, and a photo of her, which he has shown to friends.

General reactions? You can imagine the fear of castration the Iraqi males are going thru at the moment, don't expect this to be swallowed very easily, and to divert this unease they would just say something along the lines: "she doesn't look very pretty does she?". One person who doesn't actually work here but was dragged by a colleague to see the picture said: "you know it is their intention to destroy the pride of the muslim man". Tread carefully is what I say; change shouldn't be plunked on people's heads like this, especially when there already is an atmosphere of mistrust and unfriendliness.

Whew.

Pax adds,

Someone said this will be like having another Gertrude Bell, I am not sure this is good. [two interesting links: The female Lawrence of Arabia and the Gertrude Bell Project with an amazing photo library...

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Time Magazine's Joshua Kucera was blogging from Kurdistan. But...

My editors have demanded that I stop posting to this site until the war ends. And they pay the bills, so what can I do. Thanks everyone for reading, and I hope to be back here soon. Peace, Josh.

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Column cancelled: Brent Flynn of the Lewisville (Texas) Leader wrote an impassioned column on behalf of dissent, and it became his last. Here's the end of Who are the real, useful idiots? and Flynn's postscript:

...If it sounds like I take these attacks personally, that's because I do. I went to my first anti-war protest last month (actually it was my first time at any kind of protest). When I was walking through the streets of downtown Dallas with thousands (and there were thousands) of fellow Dallasites, Texans, Americans, it was one of the proudest moments of my life. And no amount of brow-beating and comparisons to Lenin's unwitting dupes will change that.

No, the protesters aren't unpatriotic, un-American or useful idiots, but people who criticize them for practicing democracy in its purest form have a few things to learn about citizenship in a democratic republic. It is not merely your right to dissent when you disagree with your government's policies, IT IS YOUR CIVIC OBLIGATION.

Before the Bush hawks start exporting democracy to the Middle East through the use of military force, maybe we should make sure we've got it right in America.
--
Columnist's note: This was my last column to appear in the Star Community Newspaper cluster. It is ironic that after writing a forceful essay in support of the first amendment, my column was cancelled. I was told that because I had attended an anti-war rally, I had violated the newspaper's ethics policy that prohibits members of the editorial staff from participating in any political activity other than voting. I was also told that my objectivity as a reporter would be called into question. However, my opposition to an invasion of Iraq was well documented in previous columns before I revealed that I had participated in the protest. But instead of taking me off of my beat or terminating my employment as a staff reporter, my opinion column was cancelled-- the aspect of my job that was enhanced by my participation in the rally. In my opinion, a powerful liberal voice was unwelcome in the conservative Republican county served by my newspaper. The fact that the column was cancelled just days before the start of the US invasion of Iraq raises serious questions about the motives for the cancellation.

This and more of Flynn's columns are at brentflynn.com

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Suddenly, real war hits home: Andrew Gumbel in the New Zealand Herald.

"This kind of thing has not been seen on US television screens for more than 30 years," said Sandy Cate, an anthropology professor from San Francisco. "You've got one, perhaps two, generations who have grown up with no idea of what war is really like ... . Well, now they are learning."

Spam inside: Dan Gillmor (S.J. Mercury News), watching our backs while we watch the war:

Terms of Disservice: The arrogance of technology companies knows no bounds. Consider the Terms of Service at a new company called Mailblocks, which says it'll block spam (unsolicited commercial e-mail) for you, for a price that includes not just money but also the right to send you commercial e-mail.

Excerpt:

In exchange for your use of the Services, you expressly permit and authorize Company, and such third parties as may be authorized by Company, to furnish to you from time to time, through the Services or any other means, with information prepared by Company or by (or on behalf of) other entities, including advertisements and solicitations (such information, “Third Party Content”). ...

Antispam software that requires you to accept their "partners' " spam is not on your side.

Funny, the N.Y. Times gush about Mailblocks didn't mention this.

"Paused" blogger Kevin Sites reporting for CNN: A diary from the front lines with Kurdish militia

Banks ordered to transfer $1.74 billion in frozen Iraqi funds to US account: (Al Bawaba, Jordan)

Last week, the US Treasury Department ordered 17 of the world's largest financial institutions, both in the United States and abroad, to transfer the frozen Iraqi assets to an account in New York’s Federal Reserve Bank.

But Brown rejects US bid for Iraqi cash: (Guardian UK)

The chancellor of the exchequer, Gordon Brown, is unwilling to comply
with a US demand that he should turn over £200m Iraqi assets frozen in
Britain to an American-controlled account.

Britain wants the UN to control the funds, which have been frozen since
the first Gulf war began 12 years ago.

This might (finally) be a generic url for the BBC Reporters Log.

March 24, 2003

Inform yourself: The POW video will stay on stop today, with new links under that item.

POW interview links: Five scared young Americans say who they are, where they're from, what they're doing in Iraq. Two minutes. Open Location from the RealPlayer file menu and paste this link in: http://pubweb.nwu.edu/~spiritu/pow2.rm

Or, click on this link to download the file to your drive; then Open File from the RealPlayer file menu and browse to where you've saved it.

(You can't just click on it because none of the sites serving the file own a RealServer, which would permit streaming.)

Hometown coverage: The Kansas City Star reports on POW Pfc. Patrick Miller of Park City, Kan., who had shipped out just two weeks ago:

Miller's half brother, Thomas Hershberger, 27, of Derby, Kan., said he hoped the media coverage would protect his brother from harm.

"The more of an asset he becomes," he said, "the less likely he is to be hurt."

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Al-Jazeera website debuts in English. (This had long been planned for the end of the month, anyway.) I'm moving up the link to their TV feed, which is sometimes in English overlaid with louder Arabic translations: Al-Jazeera TV: You can watch it live here. (Windows media format)

Revolution is not an AOL Keyword: With apologies to Gil Scott-Heron.

Dodging between two hostile armies, desperate to reach market in Baghdad: An Iraqi's just trying to get his tomatoes to market before they spoil.

Best running log of the war: The Agonist by Sean Paul Kelley. He's one man with two TVs and 32 browser windows open. Amazing job.

BBC Reporters Log: The link changes daily. Here's today's.

"Salam Pax" is again blogging from Baghdad, after two days without net access. There's a mirror here, if the first link is too busy.

Iraq Diaries: “How dare you refer to our friends as ‘collateral damage?” The Iraq Peace Team are getting their stories out at Electronic Iraq.

Email to the troops: Send messages of support even if you don't know anyone overseas. OperationDearAbby.net is hosted by AnyServiceMember.Navy.Mil.

Music for the troops: Operation Troop Trax seeks CDs and donations to provide music, audio books and batteries to soldiers to share with all.

The War Machine - The military's laptop of choice provokes shock and awe. At Slate.

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Subterranean Homepage News
by Sheila Lennon
features & interactive producer of projo.com