Big Dick Creams Toy Boy

"...kinky shit, an old Hun sodomizing a goat or something."

"It's a question of American intelligence."

I can imagine Cheney giving that same smirk today, mimicking Edwards under his breath. "'Oh, I'm sorry. I broke the rules." Yeah, John, get to know thyself, but get to know thine enemy better. It often amounts to the same thing. Hell, before now I doubted I'd ever link to National Review Online or the New York Post, but these guys aren't afraid to tell it like it is—before adopting the gloat of well-fed swine.

From Seventh Heaven, National Review Online's David Frum likens the vice-presidential debate to manslaughter. Froths Frum:

"What can one say about John Edwards's performance? He certainly did not make Al Gore's error in 1996: With his repeated and worshipful descriptions of John Kerry—not to mention Edwards's moist good looks—you have to say that he would fill the role of First Lady much better than Teresa Heinz is likely to do. It would all have been very impressive—if Cheney's scalpel had not so swiftly and mercilessly sliced Edwards's living liver out of his body, impaled it quivering on a stick, and paraded it before Edwards' soulful eyes before the poor man expired."

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Can you blame the guy? I mean, Edwards was ingratiating, obsequious, pathetic. It's not Bush who needs to get his act together in the final two debates; Kerry needs to reinvent himself if he's to blow Dubya away or stand any chance of taking this election. Earlier this year, I had as little respect for Howard Dean as I do now for John Kerry but, at the moment, the Democrats need Dean's passion if they're to make a fight of it. Face it, Cheney did beat Edwards like a drum. The transcripts make for entertaining reading; as does John Podhoretz's piece in the Post, Cheney Rocks.



EDWARDS: There are so many things that could be done to keep this country safe...

IFILL: Would you like to respond? Thirty seconds.

CHENEY: No.

[...]

CHENEY: Well, Gwen, I can think of a lot of words to describe Senator Kerry's position on Iraq; "consistent" is not one of them.

[...]

CHENEY: Now if they couldn't stand up to the pressures that Howard Dean represented, how can we expect them to stand up to Al Qaida?

Heh... I almost like the guy. Laconic best describes Cheney. Whereas Bush knows he's in a fight, Cheney knows he is not. Cheney's in control. He is Spartan brevity personified. Podhoretz puts it best:

But in the end, it was Cheney's night pretty decisively. He banged on Edwards like a drum, and while the North Carolina senator tried to give as good as he was getting, he never really blunted the vice president's relentless march forward.

Cheney's utter consistency of approach and his command of detail on foreign policy combined with his grave yet grandfatherly mien to make it seem as though he were an Old Sage who had agreed to grant an attractive young whippersnapper a master class in how to win an argument.

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EDWARDS: I'm sorry, I broke the rules.

Yeah, John, you sure did. But it's not that breaking the rules matters. It's admitting to breaking them that will cost you.

"Aw, c'mon now..."

Grow the African Web

Says Nadler-Nir: "Blogs are personal 'actualisations' of the web." Like personal diaries, journals, biographies and autobiographies "blogs offer us one’s personal view of the world. Whether we accept the 'blogger' as a valid source, or read it because we think the blogger is an idiot worth observing, the result is a personal connection between us — and the blogger."

This personal connection is one factor that has drawn many people to read blogs – or even start their own. Says Mike Golby of YBLOG ZA, who’s been blogging since January 2002: "Blogging's a participatory and open-ended pastime. It's also a great leveller. Everybody and nobody is both an expert and an idiot."

[...]

Golby emphasises the point: "Essentially, blogging comprises 'conversations', reciprocal web-based interactions creating new spaces and lasting online communities in what bloggers often term the 'blogosphere'. Relationships are formed and defined by the value of what one has to say, and communities by those who wish to join conversations."

And it’s this sense of community that attracted iafrica.com. According to Debby Hammond, the company’s General Manager: "iafrica.com's users have a strong sense of community and often share their thoughts and ideas via the online forums and chat rooms on our site. To further enhance the community, we have decided to create a blogging section."

more...

iAfrica.com | What the blog is it?

They quote respected bloggers too. All in all, a good overview. Pity about the lack of links though. Local IT fundi and Web guru Arthur Goldstuck estimates we have something like 200 bloggers battering keyboards in South Africa. Not having much of a Web presence, I've no idea how he arrives at that figure. Iran has 12,000. It's apparent South Africans (and Africans as a whole) have yet to overcome the tyranny of telecoms monopolies and discover the magic of the hyperlink. As David Weinberger points out, the hyperlink is "...the mechanism that enables the Web to be the Web.... Hyperlinks are the geography of the Web."

Afrique Sans Frontieres

Centre Noeuds [Roberto Matta]

I have undone this distance | So many times before | It seems as if this life of mine | Is trapped between two shores | As the little ones grow older on the station platform | I will undo that distance just once more.

Frank Paynter's stirring the pot. He points to Bruce Stirling on Worldchanging, commenting on, among other things, last year's World Summit on the Information Society, "...the weirdest global summit on the globe..." where "delegates from 180 nations triumphantly proclaimed the dawn of universal global access to information!" Yeah, okay, you're right to sneer. I agree. Sceptism is healthy. But give the guy a chance:

At WSIS, earnest people are trying hard to make it look like our world's net-transformation is happening on purpose. There might be a tipping point in there — if enough of them can agree on a societal spirit and a set of online rules.

Okay, we all know what that means. Back to the drawing board. Or does it? These guys are not figureheads, and they've travelled a long way from bureaucracy, immersing themselves "...apparently forever, in a dizzying host of thoroughly unlikely, lateral, polyglot connections." Pointing out WSIS drawbacks, e.g. the Net affords self-respecting, grease-palmed politicians few diplomatic, deliberative, multi-lingual regulators worthy of the name, Stirling sees the summit as a forum in which those who attend, do the work. They are "digital Sherpas", people capable of realising dreams. But success is not a dead cert.

WSIS may not succeed — but somebody probably could. Then you'd truly have the world-changing infant of the Net and the UN. The group that pulled that off could be bigger than the self-appointed Davos Forum, faster and smarter than the Porto Alegre contingent, less cranky than the Soros initiatives, less creepy than Bilderberg, more potent than MoveOn, and faster-spreading than Napster. Imagine that — what if that actually worked?

Ho-hum. Yeah, sure. What if...? Mind you, why the hell not? The World Forum on Communication Rights, a valuable exercise in its own right, runs alongside the WSIS as a sideshow. These people have clout. Imagine if...

And hold the thought...


Oceane les Tempetes [Roberto Matta]

My brothers and my sisters have been scattered in the wind | Dressed in cheap horizons that have never quite fitted | And for centuries they've travelled in a pale phantom ship | Sailing for that shore which has no other.

...while imagining Africa stripped of its borders, those long, straight strips drawn across the continent's face by its former rulers, the depraved European colonials of not so long ago. Crazed after a century of making like Americans in Iraq, the barbaric conquistadors drank the blood of millions before divvying up Africa among themselves. We locals eyed them quietly and waited. Time and opportunity swung our way during the sixties and we flogged our former masters like mange-ridden dogs before driving them back north with their tails between their legs.

A ghastly testament to white barbarity, the lines on the map remain. And that is apparently why Madison is hosting the AWB Conference 2004. Umm, yeah, that's the Africa Without Borders Conference, not the Afrikaner Weerstands Beweging. Though he might be one of the Great South Africans (according to SABC3's execrable programme of that name), Eugene Terreblanche wouldn't last a day in Madison. Americans aren't as tolerant as Africans. Africa Without Borders wants Pan-Africanism to work. Unlike the WSIS, its capacity to effect change lies beyond the ubiquity of information.

Borders are a bugger. Especially those drawn unilaterally by foreign slave traders, earth gougers, death dealers and soldiers of fortune. They give rise to a structured, artificial view of a world in flux. For the Westerner, globalisation transcends these now inconvenient lines on maps, rendering them superfluous. Advantages of globalisation, however, accrue only to said Westerners. Africans, who've heard the huge sucking sound off the west coast (where the oil used to be), are aware of this.

"Remember Mogadishu," mutters the old man to the young boy cleaning his rusted AK-47 at the entrance to his hut. The boy looks up at him and smiles. "Don't worry, Poppa. Najaf and Fallujah too. We'll just repeat the exercise. They won't be here long."

In general, Africans have long dispensed with or transcended the white man's borders. Ask any white man. Or woman, for that matter. Especially in Cape Town. "The buggers are all over the place. What do they think this is? Nirvana? I mean, the car park attendant is Rwandan, the cleaning lady is from Burundi, my son's drug dealer is from Nigeria and the Church is being flooded by people from the DRC. Angolans and Zimbabweans are taking jobs from our locals and I'm willing to bet Athlone's full of al-Qa'ida members from Algeria, Libya, Kenya and Tanzania. That said, they're certainly not as lazy as our chaps. Good luck to them."

Yes, well, that's Cape Town for you. It's becoming 'Africanised'. Not surprisingly, the rest of Africa's already Africanised. It's full of teachers, writers, soldiers, artists, politicians, peasants, musicians, academics, philosophers, businessmen and doctors...about 900 million people who view the world differently than your average NYSE stockbroker.

Some Africans, however, especially those buying into the crumbs falling from globalisation's groaning table, are into border maintenance. Self-proclaimed lords and masters of all they survey, they treat their countries and their people as personal assets. Their self-serving greed, fed by Western overlords driven crazy by the thought of all those diamonds, coltan, plutonium, manganese, uranium and all that oil, threatens Africa's future and its survival. A cursory study of Africa Without Borders' agenda [pdf] shows a life of indentured servitude does not appeal to all. Drawing on the teachings of our Sobukwes, Africa Without Borders seeks to swap the gun for the pen by employing an African mobilisation to effectively counter Western globalisation.

The conference kicks off by interrogating borders and nationalism in West Africa, defines Pan-Africanism and works from local to global, reinventing globalisation as a not-altogether undesirable inevitability contributing to Africa's development. Inexorably, we're drawn into examining methods of adding value to our intellectual, artistic, linguistic and cultural capital through media dissemination. Delegates will then comprehensively tackle problems (conflict, politics, xenophobia, educational constraints and hiv / AIDS) and try to assess the youth's potential to give weight and effect to change.

It seems delegates, drawing on the experience of African Americans, will then link the spread of essentially African ideas to the diaspora, the natural and unnatural flows of people, be they within or without Africa, examining quantitative and qualitative measurements of success and failure, and exploring advocacy and activism.

These delgates, unlike the World Summit on the Information Society mob, are intellectual rather than digital 'sherpas', seeking a free flow of ideas relegating borders to instruments of bureaucratic facilitation. Yet, much like the delegates at the WSIS, they are people capable of realising dreams. Applying Bruce Stirling's remarks quoted above, there is no reason why Africa Without Borders should not achieve its objectives. Africa's borders will then increasingly come to be seen for what they are, useful reminders of an unthinking globalisation's arbitrary nature; lines drawn in African blood by indifferent rulers preferring the sword to the pen.

From our hands leap the buildings | From our shoulders bridges fall | We stand astride the mountain | And pull out all the gold | The rivers of our homelands | Murmur in our dreams | We are trapped inside that distance | Until the future sets us free.

Johnny Clegg | Universal Men

Ev Blogs On

The reason I'm leaving probably comes down to personality more than anything. I've just always been stubbornly independent-minded — even when it wasn't necessarily in my best interest. I hated school. I dropped out of college (never believing I needed a degree because I wasn't going to work for anyone anyway). I started two or three companies (depending on what you call a "company") before starting Pyra. (Let's just call them "great learning experiences.") I only ever had one real job, and it lasted just a few months, though it was at another cool company (O'Reilly).

When I started at Google, I knew I was giving up my independence and knew I probably wouldn't like that eventually. So I promised myself I'd stay at least a year. I stayed for a year and eight months and have had a fun, fascinating, and extremely educational time. I'm honored to have been a part of Google for such a historic period.

If I was going to work for anyone, I'd work for Google. It's, basically, just not in my nature.

more...

Hmm, that's a loaded sentence. Yeah, and Al Pacino will be playing Ev in The Blogfather Too. Scoble told me. He rang to give me the URL to MSN's South African page, but I think he was just trying to cheer me up. I mean, what can one say? "Thanks, Ev, we've been through a lot together," is about it, I guess.

Uh, yeah, but does this now mean nobody's going to fix my template. I can't access the bloody thing and I want it fixed before you...agh, never mind.

Note to Sean Kapp: Ev does not wear glasses. In Norwegian or any other language.

Google's Blind Spot

Google software engineer Sean Kapp tells us Google "...means 'sunglasses' in Norwegian, and, well, even the non-lawyers can see where this sort of problem leads." Indeed. With copyright paranoia gripping the so-called Free World, Norway must have proved a bitch. No matter. The boys and girls at the Googleplex are professionals and well paid to boot. They proved up to the challenge and this week Norway and Kenya became Google's 102nd and 103rd domains.

"Check them all out," urges Sean, before asking: "Hey, anyone got an up-to-date atlas we can borrow?" Well no, Sean, I don't have an atlas for you, but I figure you don't need one. South Africa's at the bottom of Africa. It's easy enough to find. In fact, if you go to www.google.co.za, you'll find a familiar interface. Yeah, it's yours. So tell me, Sean, why is this domain not customised? Why is South Africa, so to speak, not on Google's map? If sunglasses spelled 'trouble' for you in Norway, what heinous problems does Africa's most wired country pose the Web's most used engine?

Listen, I have nothing against Kenya, Namibia, Rwanda, Burundi, Lesotho, Libya, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Uganda, Mauritius, Cote D'Ivoire, Malawi, the Congo Republic, Chad, Gambia, or Goddamn Djibouti but, for Chrissakes, man, can you not see our rainbow flag enjoying its place in the sun?

If you can distinguish your one Congo from the other, your request for an atlas is a red herring. I'm onto you, Bubba. You've a blind spot called South Africa and I know what your problem is. It's either our eleven official languages or those bloody Norwegian sunglasses you're wearing.

Bob's Back Pages

"Lest we forget, while you're writing, you're not living. What do they call it? Splendid isolation? I don't find it that splendid."

Kevin Odegard and Chris Weber are not credited for their guitar work on what many regard as one of Dylan's greatest albums, Blood on the Tracks. Nor are drummer Bill Berg and bassist Billy Peterson. They backed Dylan when he re-recorded half the album in a south Minneapolis recording studio late in 1974. In 30 years, nobody's bothered to correct the error. Not that the musicians hold any grudges. With Eric 'Dueling Banjos' Weissberg, they gathered at the Pantages Theatre in Minneapolis early March 2004 to perform Blood on the Tracks and launch A Simple Twist of Fate, co-authored by Odegard and British journalist Andy Gill.

Most who listen to Dylan's music know something of the iconic, ever-changing myth behind the lyrics and music attributed to the one-time Robert Zimmerman of Hibbing, Minnesota. Frankly, I find it detracts from the reclusive songwriter's immense body of work. To me, Dylan is the music I hear on listening to one of his albums. Nothing more, nothing less. I do have a copy of Robert Shelton's No Direction Home and I have read Greil Marcus's The Old, Weird America, but Dylan's early life chronicled by sycophants is enough to turn anybody against him.

By all accounts, he was a 'user'; a selfish, opinionated little shit driven by overriding ambition. I don't blame him. He wanted to write and sing through the 1960s and the music industry's a hard dollar. He did what he had to do. Forty years and more than a thousand songs later, the rest—as they say—is history. Or, were it not for the music industry and the idiosyncrasies of the man, it would be. Dylan's genius, his desire for privacy and others' need to know more of the person behind lyrics still shaping their lives, have fuelled speculation and fed the monster of legend.

Dylan's refusal to be anything but that which he feels himself to be has done little to defuse hype and speculation. He has been many things to many people over four decades. Whether a poet, troubadour, lyricist, singer, clown or minstrel, he has been followed by legions of music consumers trying to nail him to a single, simple definition. I do know many of his songs target his audience, and he has been scathing, almost contemptuous. And he has evaded them all. I don't know whether Bob Dylan is unpredictable, swims against the tide, or is just 'otherwise'. It doesn't matter. Had he not maintained his privacy, his acolytes might have torn his psyche to shreds some three decades ago. He escaped a story scripted for him by millions and stuck to his music.

Not that he's produced much since Love and Theft which, replete with coffins plummeting to the streets, fanned allegations of prophetic genius on its release on September 11, 2001. More recently, Dylan received yet another honorary doctorate in music from a Scottish university. He looked bored. I recall seeing the photograph and thinking, "I wonder what he's up to." Now we know. Chronicles Volume One, the first in a BBC-acclaimed three-volume autobiography, will be published this week. Newsweek's David Gates interviews Dylan:

"Chronicles," written at the urging of Simon & Schuster publisher David Rosenthal, is neither a cradle-to-one-foot-in-the-grave autobiography nor a true memoir, tightly focused on a single crucial period. Instead, as Dylan puts it, "It's like I had a full deck, and I cut the cards and whatever you see you go with that. I realize there's a great gap in it." What he saw ended up as an evocation of his early days in Greenwich Village, chapters on the genesis of two lesser-known albums, "New Morning" (1970) and "Oh Mercy" (1989), and a section on his forced retreat from his own celebrity. (It's the subject of the exclusive excerpt that follows this piece.) The Biblical title Rosenthal suggested made intuitive sense to Dylan. "'Chronicles' just means — I'm not sure what it means" — he laughs — "but it would seem to be some kind of thing where you can make right use of the past."

Understandably, it's a media event. Newsweek follows up the interview with a predictably asinine online discussion and tosses a chunk of text to the wolves.

I won't be buying or reading Chronicles: Volume One anytime soon. Whether written by Dylan or yet another journalist on the make, it's bound to amount to little more than another block of text obscuring the songwriter's genius; his music. The Observer's Caspar Llewellyn Smith writes:

Paradoxically, his enduring presence as a touring artist has allowed Dylan to strip himself of the celebrity hokum and the attendant claims made on his behalf that he so plainly despises.

'I escaped the organised media,' he has said in the past. 'They let me be. They considered me irrelevant, which was the best thing that could have happened to me.' If anywhere, attention has been directed on to his unsurpassed canon of songs, which is how, one always imagined, he prefers it.

That about sums it up. Bob Dylan has turned another trick. Eschewing a manufactured immortality, he now contributes to the slew of 'celebrity hokum' defining it, and sends the legions clattering up another blind alley. If there's one thing Dylan is good at, be it by advertising lingerie or by lending his name to Italian wines, it's slaughtering sacred cows. Just as the credits on the sleeve of Blood on the Tracks mean little to the musicians who made the music, the myth of Bob Dylan counts for little but an illusory mix of smoke and mirrors. Especially to Bob Dylan.

Only the music remains. And that's the way it should be.

Yes, my guard stood hard when abstract threats | Too noble to neglect | Deceived me into thinking | I had something to protect | Good and bad, I define these terms | Quite clear, no doubt, somehow. | Ah, but I was so much older then, | I'm younger than that now.

Bob Dylan | My Back Pages

No Questions Asked

With polls showing the ball in Big Dick's court following the launch of the bush-shadowbush show last Thursday, I can't resist offering my two bits' worth on the first head to head. Well, actually, I can. What the hell does one say to such a farce? Is this what democracy is about? Is this how presidents are chosen? Beyond shared voting histories, debating teachers, distant relatives, clubs and interests in the war and oil industries, who are these guys?

Facing 60 million gullible viewers, neither offered a single substantive argument favouring their candidacy. Again...who are these guys? Or does it boil down to 'confidence', 'style', dress, mannerisms, articulation and enunciation? It sure as hell looks like it. For my money, Bush took it by repeating the mantras of his heartland. "This is a hard job", "Stay the course", and a repeated (and warranted) mocking of shadowbush's desperate ambivalence.

shadowbush: "...the president made a mistake in invading Iraq."

Lehrer: "Are Americans now dying in Iraq for a mistake?"

shadowbush: "No, and they don't have to, providing we have the leadership that...I'm offering." [butchery]

bush: "So what's the message going to be: 'Please join us in Iraq. We're a grand diversion. Join us for a war that is the wrong war at the wrong place at the wrong time?" ... They're not going to follow somebody who says, "This is the wrong war at the wrong place at the wrong time.'" ... "As the politics change, his positions change. And that's not how a commander in chief acts."

You have to hand it to the guy. Two weeks after the debates, middle America will remember only shadowbush's haughty patrician style and the incumbent's commitment to finishing "...a hard job." On Israel's behalf, of course. Now, let's see how resident serial killer and baby rapist Big Dick deals with shadowbush's toy boy Tuesday night.

What else is there to do but watch TV as IDF soldiers rampage through Gaza and 5,000 U.S. troops storm Samarra in a desperate attempt to foist Washington's hegemony onto millions of people and a blood-soaked corner of the hapless Middle East?

Agh, really, it's a disgrace. Neither would have cut it in my high-school debating society. Meaningful dissection of these reality shows featuring cardboard cutouts fighting for the privilege of sowing death, discord and general carnage is impossible. Of many bloggers seeing these 'debates' for what they are, Tom Matrullo gives (for me) the most worthwhile serious critique.

Anyone who thinks Kerry won the debate is forgetting about folks who don't regard debates as being about finding truth (given the media's accommodation of political cosmeticians, they have a point). They're ignoring people who have long since abandoned any effort to distinguish truth from lie for themselves, preferring to put their hopes in the strong hands of a leader who has exactly that note of straining care in his voice, the misericordia of Blind Faith up against Ultimate Evil in a World o' Pain.

Kerry issues logical discourse. Bush emits the keening of country music suffering that knows no logic. Kerry thinks he can win by being correct. Bush knows that the more Wrong he is, the more his leadership will tighten its noose around his faith-stricken followers...

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Read the transcript and listen to the subtext. bush is on song; shadowbush remains...well, shadowbush (with a finger reminding me of P.W. Botha in his heyday). Not that it matters. Neither will be inclined to mess with a neocon agenda forty years in the planning and execution. Should shadowbush triumph and ever find himself inclined to do so, he and those he brings in ("Who are these guys?") will be assassinated. The neocons believe in their cause and they are comfortable with extrajudicial methods.

And remember too, Great Britain is by no means the largest coalition partner in this illegal venture, i.e. the sundering of Iraq. The 30-40,000 mercenaries dying so that U.S. marines may live tip the blunt spear of U.S. colonialism. Twas ever thus. Nor, unfortunately, is help on the way.

Back In Yurp

"Back in Yurp."

Reuters reports United States President George W. Bush, crushed by humiliating defeats in Afghanistan and Iraq, flying to London to return his country to Queen Elizabeth II. Following emotional late-night talks at Buckingham Palace, the British monarch is reported to have accepted the former U.S. leader's request and has asked her prime minister, Lord Blair of Kut al-Amara, to negotiate joint custodianship of her former colony with French President Jacques Chirac.

A spokesperson for Her Majesty, Sir Scratcher Arse, told Reuters an interim agreement has been reached whereby the greater part of the United States will be run by Commonwealth member, Canada, which will annex Alaska. Texas will be administered by Canada's NAFTA partner, Mexico. Speaking from San Miguel de Allende, Mexican President Vicente Fox welcomed the move, ordering General Manuel Francisco's Santa Ana Brigades to enter Dallas, Fort Worth and Houston.

In a late night call to Governor Linda Lingle of Hawaii, Her Majesty indicated that the island chain is "free to go". And in other developments, California has been banned, Mississippi, Arkansas and Colorado placed under house arrest, Michigan and Louisiana liquidated, and Florida boarded up. A reward of $50 million has been offered anybody offering information leading to the apprehension of former U.S. vice-president Richard 'Dick' Cheney, defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Florida governor, Jeb Bush.

"We shall shortly be despatching military personnel and teams of civil servants from Whitehall to take over the running of that country," said Sir Arse. "Until these teams are in place, Her Majesty asks that all former U.S. citizens refrain from mass murder, surrender their weapons, return home and shut the fuck up. Those in conflict zones should report to their nearest police station. For now, policing within the former United States will be carried out by a coalition force comprising Mexican law enforcement agencies assisted by members of Cuba's Revolutionary Army."

Asked to confirm rumours the heavily-sedated former U.S. president has left London for the Hague to hold high-level discussions with the International Criminal Court, Sir Arse declined to comment, referring reporters' legal questions to a smiling Secretary General of the United Nations, Kofi Annan. more...

Over There

"Tal Afar is closed."

Tal Afar is an almost entirely Turkmen enclave in northwestern Iraq. I had just finished writing a book about the history of these Turkish – speaking indigenous Iraqis. As part of my research, I had visited Tal Afar in June and felt that if I could just reach my known contacts, I would be safe among friends. I knew there would be some risk involved – particularly once the Americans attacked – but I planned to observe the fighting from a safe house, well away from any actual combat.

The sight of U.S. paid Iraqi police forces monitoring traffic had seemed like a good sign that things were still under control, despite the recent fighting. As I did not have an exact address for my previous contact, I approached a police checkpoint to ask for assistance. When I asked them to be taken "to Dr. Yashar", they recognized his name as a prominent local Turkmen official and eagerly nodded in the affirmative. A senior policeman was summoned and he instructed me and Zeynep Tugrul, a Turkish journalist who was serving as my translator, and filing her own reports for Sabah, a daily national newspaper, to climb into a nearby car containing four masked gunman. As we clambered into the backseat, one of the gunmen said in excellent English, "We will take you to Doctor Yashar – please do not be afraid". more...

With so many hours to once again contemplate my own death I began to think of all the practical aspects which would be attendant upon my demise.

Scott Taylor

This took place forty years ago in Africa, and still I ponder it—the opportunity, the self-deception, the sex, the power, the fear, the confrontation, the foolishness, all the wrongness. The incident has informed one of my early novels and several short stories. It was something like First Contact, the classic encounter between the wanderer and the hidden indigenous person, the meeting of people who are such utter strangers to each other that one side sees a ghost and the other side suspects an opportunity. It won’t leave my mind.

I had gone from America to Africa and had been there for almost a year: Nyasaland. Independence came and with it a new name, Malawi. I was a teacher in a small school. I spoke the language, Chichewa. I had a house and even a cook, a Yao Muslim named Jika. My cook had a cook of his own, a young boy, Ismail. We were content in the bush, a corner of the southern highlands, red dust, bad roads, ragged people. Apart from the clammy cold season, June to August, none of this seemed strange. I had been expecting this Africa and I liked it. I used to say: I’ll get culture shock when I go back home. more...

But this was my first true experience of captivity and difference, memorable for being horribly satirical. It had shocked me and made me feel American.

Paul Theroux

Note Aw, Dude, a video of the massacre of civilians in Fallujah during July, 2004, is available at the GlobalResearch.ca forums and at thenausea.com. Watch it and feel American. Original link via David Weinberger.

Drink Socks and Die

My coffe mug. When it's empty [See below for surprise effect].

I had a dark coffee mug that changed color to reveal a message when filled. Mine showed an Intel logo. Remarkable. My wife broke it when she fell down the stairs. So I had to buy another. That's a picture of it up there.

I tried blogging today. Frank Panter posted a link to the Winona Daily News. He called it the Winona Daily Bleat or something. More, he thinks Bruce is a nice chap. I think so too.

This article in the Winona Daily News—of which Frank writes—is interesting. It's about a motorcyclist driving at 205 mph on a public road. You wouldn't catch me doing that. [Don't mention this to Frank. He believes me to be something of a daredevil.]

Anyway, an officer of the law in an airplane apprehended the motorcyclist. I'd have to read the article again to find out how he did it, but it doesn't really matter. You can read the article yourself if you want to. In fact, you can read the whole Winona Daily News. It's online, as they say.

It's a Minnesota paper. Bob Dylan's from Minnesota, so Frank thought of me, which is very nice of him. He also thought of Stu Savory. Why, I'm not quite sure, but I think it has something to do with motorcycles. Stu lives in Germany. They make BMWs there.

Where was I?

Okay... I thought I'd respond to Frank's post. The other day, I posted an entry on hyperlinks. Dave Winer and Robert Scoble, much like the guys who write books telling one how to become a millionnaire, offer advice on becoming popular. So, being over at Frank's place and not being in a mood to go elsewhere, I thought, "What the hell, let's give it a bash."

"Give what a bash?" I hear you ask.

"Commenting, Dumbo."

Scoble, who seems a nice chap—I don't know him as well as I do Bruce, but most bloggers are nice when you get to know them—says commenting will increase your popularity. This is what I wrote:

I want one...

[Editor's note: I'm referring to a fast motorcycle here. I don't want Frank to think twenty-five years and three children have slowed me. Not to mention my wife falling down the stairs and breaking my cup.]

Stu can nurse me around the old Nurburgring.

[Editor's note: Stu lives in Germany and that's where the old Nurburgring is too. But I think I told you that. Perhaps I'll leave the edits for later. Dave Winer does.]

Perhaps it was Bob; leaving town.

Five years ago, nobody read the Winona Daily News. Now you read it and I read it. Hell, we all read it. Whether that's a good or a bad thing, we'll probably only know in about five years' time. But it—connectivity—has certainly made the run in to these elections of yours some kind of fascinating.

By God, you Americans are a strange people. How else does one explain the Cat Stevens thing? That said, we still love some of you. Y'know?

Where will we be in five years' time? I guess we're like the 205 mph biker. At the rate we're going, we certainly won't be here, and 'there' is a long way off. The cop kinda reminds me of Winona's Officer Obie. Five years at 205 mph will probably see us all blogging at Alice's Restaurant at the End of the Universe.

There or at the old Nuremberg Ring. Or whatever it's called. And we'll have front-row seats in the comment boxes :).

And that's where I left it. Quite frankly, I couldn't think of anything else to say. Besides, I was tired. Blogging's quite an effort.

Note It's always polite to put a smiley at the end of a comment. It's called netiquette.

I might add that there are several literary allusions in that comment. 'Bob' is actually Bob Dylan, the singer. He was born in Hibbing, a town in Minnesota. He left in a hurry. Frank's been to Hibbing. What's it like Frank?

No answer.

Typical.

Anyway, I was tired so I began to make myself a cup of tea. I drink my tea from my coffee mug. Doing that—drinking tea from a coffee mug—is called an anachronism or something.

I thought I'd make the tea and leave the blog to percolate. That's a joke. I know it's not a very good one, but at least I'm trying. I wanted to see if Scoble's theory worked. I finished making my tea and returned to my machine to see if I was popular.

I wasn't.

So much for Scoble. He shouldn't pull hoaxes like that. I don't like it. But it doesn't matter.

I bought my coffee mug—the new one replacing that which my wife broke when she fell down the stairs—from my club. My club is, unfortunately, only for men. This may be considered sexist, but you girl bloggers should be quite used to sexism by now.

It changes color too. My new cup, that is. You can see what it says on the outside when it's full of tea. All you have to do is click on the picture I've stuck at the top. Actually, you can also click on the link I've just made. In the last sentence but one.

Clever, eh?

Blogging may be tiring, but it certainly has its rewards. Then again, I'd not have written this essay had I not been a member of the club. It has its own rewards.

You may have noticed that I've surreptitiously inserted quite a few links to my club in this weblog entry. I've done so because I don't really know anybody there. I'm also testing another of Scoble's theories. He says if you link a lot you become popular.

I hope he's not pulling the wool over my eyes again. I expect people to meet me at the door when I arrive.

Okay, that's it for now. I'm off to the club. I have to make some tea for my wife before I go. I'm not lending her my cup though. She broke the last one when she fell down the stairs.

Update Frank called. That's Frank Paynter. He said that he called the Winona Daily Bleat the Winona Daily Blat. I didn't ask him why he calls it that, but it seems Scoble's theory is starting to work. I might just try another comment before heading off to the club. My wife can make her own tea.

No Gitmo on the Hudson

RNC Pier 57 Holding Facility

I'm not one of these people who believe we live in a fascist regime. I think that's an insult to the many millions who have suffered under true oppression and horrors that we can only imagine. That said, the technology and mindset that I was witnessing being implemented all around us would be such an asset to any society where freedom was the enemy. What the Stalinists or Nazis could have done with all of those digital camcorders! Or the regimes of Pinochet and Ceausescu that were obsessed with knowing which among the populace were the "traitors." I tried to understand why such meticulous record keeping would be a boon to a society that wasn't trying to monitor its citizens for signs of dissent. more...


RNC Detention Center on the Hudson River

I can only pray that what happened on August 31 was a mistake that will never be repeated. But I can't say I'm optimistic - with the mayor saying the police did an "A plus" job and the mass media beginning to mock the experiences we went through. If this is indeed the beginning of a trend, then this episode will represent a big step in the decline of our freedom. These sweeps will become commonplace in the name of security. People will be held without charges for days. The suspension of rights now used on "enemy combatants" will begin to be applied in other areas, whenever national security can be even peripherally invoked. We could all wind up paying a very heavy price for our complacency. That's why, if there's to be any hope at all, we have to care and we have to get through to others. That's the purpose of my telling this story and I hope it manages to open some eyes. more...

Emmanuel Goldstein | Notes from the RNC - The 8/31 Experience (via Karmakat and Kathryn Cramer)

In many ways, Google better reflects the hullabaloo. It's early days yet, a common enough way for governments (especially before international sporting events) to treat their and other countries' citizens, and a far cry from "Gitmo on the Hudson". Let's just see how it goes, eh?

Note In two pithy posts, Tom Matrullo gets to the heart of the matter...