Tuesday, June 27, 2006

Revisiting the past

I read the comments on Iraq Blog Count for the first time in ages today and was horrified to find Salam Adil fairly much confessing to be posting without focus. The purpose, Salam Adil stated, had been "lost in the mists of time".

Fortunately, Salam Adil’s description of what Salam Adil thought Salam Adil was doing seemed relatively accurate although I would say Salam Adil seems a bit staid about it all. Adil says Adil wouldn’t add military blogs or foreign contractor blogs, Adil may just mean Adil won't link to obviously false US representations. Which is a bit hypocritical.

Although I never actually "counted" blogs of a US military nature I did sometimes link to some soldiers blogs if they seemed to have seen something interesting. I would still certainly be keeping an eye out for that sort of thing although as usual I would treat it all with some considerable neutrality along the lines of this may or may not be so until such time as it was clearly one way or the other.

I have met ordinary people who have happened to be in the military and have said things that have the ring of reality about them. "Off the record - It's shit" one guy told me. And then looked uneasy and glum. Still, having to think about linking to military blogs shouldn't be too much of a problem for you Salam Adil, there seem to be fewer soldiers around with blogs these days. After the Abu Ghraib scandal and a few other incidences, their activities might be a bit more restricted now. Or perhaps PR up on high decided it didn't look so good that there were oodles of US soldier blogs and stuff all Iraq civilian blogs.

Fortunately, blogspot has archives and if anyone really wanted to have a look back at Iraq Blog Count’s formative stages and intent, all a person would need to do, would be to go back to the original first few posts.

About the recruitment drive. That will not be necessary. Iraq Blog Count was never about evangelism.

Monday, June 26, 2006

Jeffrey pledges to shut down his blog

It is time for Jeffrey Schuster to close down his blog. By his own words he shall be deposed:

"While it lasted, Cry Me a Rubarb had been the only place where one could go to actually discuss and debate what had been written by the Jarrars and Riverbend.... ra ra ra... comments... importance of debate... email... blow blow blow...

The Jarrar family (Faiza, Raed, Khalid, and Majid) and Riverbend, however, do not have comments pages... etc etc etc

The day they enable their comments pages is the day that 'Jarrars up a River' terminates."

Jeffrey May 21, 2004


His remit is overdue. By about two years.

Majid has comments, Raed has had very popular comments (which Jeffrey and Bruno and all of their pseudonyms ruined) Khalid has had comments on at least three different blogs and has blogged with "the opposition" (an American and a secular Zionist) on at least two blogs and has many comments to this day on his own personal diary. Riverbend claims she had comments once. Faiza is out of Jeffrey's league.

Don't you think it's time Jeffrey, for you to pack up your kit.

In case Jeffrey decides to edit his own promise and pretend he never said he would shut down his site, I have taken a screenshot of his words for evidence and published it below. You will probably need to use a magnifying glass.

There is something to be said for reading the first few chapters in the book shop, before purchase

Tariq Ali (who considers himself a leftist) might like to know that when I bought his book "Bush in Babylon" I was looking forward to something really good, but I threw it down and didn't bother reading past the intro when he started on with his anti-Zionist crap. And Phyllis Chesler (who also considers herself a leftist) might like to know that when I bought her book "The new anti-semitism" I was looking forward to something that might reflect what I felt when I tossed Tariq's book into the "read later - maybe next century" corner. But I threw her book down too, when she started on about being a proud American. At about the first page. I did pick it up again though, and persevere. And she certainly had some things to write which I would agree are saliant points, although her American bias was a turn-off. Perhaps I may pick up Tariq Ali's book again although his mania, Jungvolk, Jugend and anti-Zionism are certainly off-putting.

Sooner or later I'll get around to reading Andrew Wilkie's "Axis of deceit", but I shouldn't promise myself it will be any more edifying. Especially after I just finished Rod Barton's "The weapons detectives" in which Rod Barton, a weapons detective, remains puzzled up until almost the last minute when the American and United Kingdom leaderships are making public statements about weapons of mass destruction which do not match up with the intelligence he is writing for them. It's a thriller alright. Right at the very point when it's nearly too late and after thousands of Iraqis have already been imprisoned, tortured and killed and after a colleague of Barton's has died in circumstances that somewhat might suggest assassination, Rod Barton comes out of the shadows and declares "we went to war on a lie". I read the whole thing.

Friday, June 16, 2006

Australia declares end to war on terror

DETAINEES captured by Australian soldiers in Afghanistan are not being given prisoner of war status under the Geneva Conventions, because the Federal Government says there has been no declaration of war and it is not an armed conflict more


In that case, the detainees had better be released immediately. If there is no war, then there is no war on terror and if there is no war on terror then there are no terrorists ergo the detainees are not terrorists ergo Australian soldiers are holding Afghan civilians captive. Not a good look.

At any rate, looks like the war on terror is over. Somebody must of won the war on semantics, I guess.

Sunday, June 11, 2006

Junk news

If I wanted to present a crude and inaccurate view of the world I might write “Christians mix their proteins, Jews mix their starches and Muslims mix their oil”.

And that would be that. Three simple gross inaccuracies, helpful and infinitely useful. I could apply them over and over again. Every time a world event happened I could just run it through the filter; if it smelt of rotten meat and rancid cheese the Christians must of done it, if it made someone fat the Jews did it and if it’s full of greasy lies the hands of Muslims must have been at work. What a happy content diarist I would be. Logging one misdemeanour after another and attributing it to one of these three causes by virtue of gastronomy. Or by casting aspersions on Saudi Arabian oil monopolies. But mainly with a nod to inedibility and bias.

It hasn’t stopped some writers. Crude inaccuracy. Only last week I read that falafel selling had been banned in Baghdad. Most likely, the writer implied to the world at large from behind a news column, the work of Jew-hating fascists (whether Christian or Islamist is anybodies guess). As falafels are the only thing that bring Jews and Muslims together (the writer knowingly assured the globe with the satisfaction of having investigatively passed on hearsay from inside sources) and because the only fast-food left to eat in Baghdad is pizza and burgers (now that falafel sellers have been forced underground) this must mean (the reader is left to deduce) the Jesus killers have been driven right out. Because everyone knows no Jew will touch pizza or go anywhere near the mac franchise that is sure to spring up any day now, in Iraq. A wedge, and not a potatoe one, has been neatly driven between Muslims and Jews in Baghdad (some fear) by the murder of falafel-sellers.

People mean well, I’m sure. I hope. I can’t quite find the words to describe right now the incredulity I would like to express about having read this sort of thing in the news in the world section. A pox on "investigative journalism" – a euphemism for repeating things that other people have said reliably and word for word no matter how speculative and untruthful.

Friday, June 09, 2006

ABC wedges Ruddock on David Hicks

ABC national just did an excellent job of grilling Philip Ruddock, who came across like a stumbling liar full of bees-shit. Ruddock didn’t even sound like he bought his own lines.

Wednesday, June 07, 2006

Boycotting the war – how to not talk about it

"I have been going around trying to film for this video blog for five days now and it has been a constant struggle. People do not want to talk..."

justzipit.blogspot.com


This hardly is surprising. Nobody wants to talk about anything unless there is something to be gained from it that does not include immediate death. I counted blogs for about three years and nobody in Iraq really wanted to talk. Well, maybe one or two.

Facts and figures to prove this mute point.

This time last year there were over 60 million blogs in the blogsphere and 151 of them were "Iraq" blogs. One month later there were 70 million blogs in the blogsphere. Virtual-Iraq today has 203 blogs. The rest of the blogsphere grows by at least 10million blogs per month and "Iraq" blogs grow by about 4 per month. Hullo-oh.

Anyway. I suppose you could always do with your filim what everybody else does – just make it up. Doesn’t stop the Whitehouse or the Pentagon and it doesn’t stop a good deal of diarists either. It certainly doesn’t stop John Howard in Australia. This week he is organising a two faced sided debate about nuclear power. First Howard tells us about how green it will be, and then he weighs up the cons and tells us how green it will be again.

Actually if you ask me, people not wanting to talk is a god send. People are notoriously biased and untruthful when given attention (just look at the blogsphere). In fact if I weren’t busy being silent over here, I would be busy being silent with a camera in Iraq. Probably with a noir fly on the wall approach. Half-empty glasses, long shots of unfocussed figures (silhouetted against crumbling dwellings or loitering near gaunt commercial shells) scavenging animals. Smoking ruins (this century's). That sort of thing. An occasional flap of my all concealing garments obscuring the edges, because it’s not always easy operating a camera in a tent. A silent video, set to the music of distant artillery. After all, the world has hurtled back several decades. In some aspects. Thinking Erich Von Stroheim, Cecil B. De Mille, King Vidor, Chaplin and Harold Lloyd. It was a man’s world then and nothing much has changed.

Evidence of human activity, can be so much more informative then interrogation.

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