Month: July 2002

Dead Sheikh: Part II

Lots and lots of responses to my challenge this morning; here’s a roundup with my thoughts.
First, I posed the following scenario to Eric Coe in the comments section of the post below regarding our late unlamented Sheikh:
If the blood is on [the sheikh’s] hands so firmly, let me pose another scenario. Suppose this same terrorist was cornered in a back alley by IDF troops. But somehow, he managed to grab a small child, and is holding that child up as a shield.
Clearly, he has placed the child in danger. Clearly, he is exploiting the child and the IDF’s squeamishness.
But if I follow the logic you and others seems to be advocating, it seems to say that the IDF should go ahead and open fire on full automatic. Because the terrorist made the choice to place the innocent child in danger, the IDF would bear no responsibility for its death. The blood would be, as you say, on his hands.
Am I missing something, or is this the exact same issue, differently posed? And if I’m not — would you agree that the IDF should go ahead and pull the trigger in that case, and sleep the sleep of the just that night, knowing that they bore no responsibility for the death of the child?
Eric has a response, concluding that — assuming the IDF fired in the scenario above — “It would bother me, and it would bother those IDF soldiers too. Even if you are morally justified, you probably will have trouble sleeping well, after dealing with a situation like that, with such a bloody outcome.”
But reading through Eric’s entire post, I’m not convinced he’s fully understood the distinction I’m attempting to make. Eric’s central argument (Coe, not Alterman), it seems to me, is that it is possible to morally justify the death of innocents if it will prevent greater loss of innocent life in the future. The problem is, I completely agree with that, and said so — or at least, tried to — clearly in my original post.
What I do not agree with is those who — like Alterman — seem to be confusing the kind of moral calculus Eric describes, which involves rationally weighing the benefits versus costs; the good versus evil outcomes of ones actions, with a kind of karmic “get out of jail free card” that magically appears if we’re clearly after a bad guy. My objection to Alterman’s piece was that he seemed to skip over the moral calculation entirely, preferring to simply wave his hands and say that it was all the sheikh’s fault, and that any deaths that we happen to inflict aren’t our responsibility.
That’s nonsense. My point is that it is possible, and necessary, to make these difficult moral decisions, without losing our morality along the way. We must accept that we are better than our enemies, and that we do bear responsibility for the civilian deaths we cause. Sometimes this acceptance of responsibility will lead us to conclude that the price to be paid is too high — and other times, we will conclude that for the greater good, that price must be paid.
PontifExMachina has also chimed in: “…you can’t absolve Sheik Shehada of all responsibility for the attack — he made his choices, and if he had chose diffferently, there would have been no attack. It’s not as if this murderer was an innocent bystander, you know. To say that he contributed to the attack is not equivelent to the Palestinian excuses for their suicide bombings, as Bear asserts. It’s called the ‘asking for trouble’ doctrine. And if you ask for trouble, and you get it, then you should probably look at yourself and say, ‘Maybe I shouldn’t ask for trouble next time.’ A failure to do so is a lack of responsibility, but it doesn’t absolve you of yours.”
I agree that you can’t absolve the Sheikh of all responsibility: I never said otherwise. My argument was never that the Sheikh bore no responsibility, my argument was — and is — against those who argue that the IDF does not bear responsibility, if you see the distinction.
As for PontifEx’s further point regarding the “asking for trouble” doctrine, this is another instance of a disturbing trend I’ve seen in this argument, starting with Alterman’s original post. Yes, the Sheikh asked for trouble. Of course. And yes, he got it. And you know what? I’m glad he’s dead. If there was a way I could make him any more dead, I’d be happy to do it. But we’re not talking about the Sheikh. We’re talking about the little kids that died. Did they “ask for trouble”?
PontifEx also concludes with a question: “Why, why, why do we insist on making snap judgements on every single little combat sortie, from the comfort of our homes, far away from the front? Why does the shortening of the news cycle have to turn into around-the-clock pontificiating about small engagements?”
My answer? I think there’s value in challenging oneself to identify the moral and the immoral in this world. Armchair generaling is one thing, but that’s not what I, at least, am attempting to do. I don’t claim to know good military tactics from bad ones — but I do claim to know, from my own heart, at least, what I believe is moral, and what I believe is not. And I think engaging in debates like this one with honest folks of integrity as to where those lines are is time well spent.
But wait! There’s more. Dr. Manhattan has a question: “What Bear seems to be saying is that Israel bears moral responsibility for the deaths of the civilians, but he is not saying that Israel’s actions were morally unjustified. But isn’t that the same question?”.
Nope, it’s not the same question. To say that Israel bears moral responsibility for the civilian deaths does not preclude one from concluding that, despite this, the net moral calculus comes out to say that Israel’s actions were morally justified. As I’ve said before, if in killing the Sheikh and those civilians around him would prevent massive loss of civilian life in the future, then Israel’s action was a morally just one, in my opinion. (And by the way, I’m not skirting the issue here: I haven’t said definitively whether I think it was or was not moral on balance simply because I don’t have the intelligence that Israel does; I am not well-informed enough to say what the magnitude of those future deaths might be.)
How much would you pay now? Still not convinced? JAE at WeekendPundit will throw in this free set of steak knives!
Actually, he won’t, but he will disagree with me — “the Palestinian militants, in making the conscious decisions to a) slaughter civilians, and b) house themselves in the shielding embrace of civilian populations, bear the responsibility for bringing about the circumstances that led to this unfortunate loss of life. Unfortunate. Nothing more, nothing less.” —- and also quotes himself from a previous post:
“It does not matter if the

Bloggin’ Salon Style

Salon has just joined the weblogging bandwagon — you can now get a weblog (running Radio Userland) for $39.95. That’s not so coincidentally the exact same price Dave‘s folks charge directly, so I think we can safely assume this is not the giant revenue-generating plan we’ve been waiting for to save Salon.
They’re keeping a recently-updated list and a most popular list, and Scott Rosenberg (Salon’s Managing Editor) has set up his own blog to metablog on the whole deal.
I sense that this move will be met with much snarkiness in the established blogosphere… I’ll admit that was my reflex instinct myself. But that’s the wrong reaction, I think.
This is a Good Thing, because anything that potentially “grows the pie” — of both weblogs writers, and weblogs readers — is a Good Thing. Or so I have said.
Salon is almost certainly only the first of many, here. Can YahooBlogs or AOLblogs be far behind? And yes, the inevitable MSBlogs.
If you doubt the Goodness, consider this when you are pondering your stats next: think of all the thousands upon thousands of daily readers of online mags like Salon who aren’t in the habit of reading weblogs, mainly because the thought never occured to them. Those are your future readers — and Salon just created a massive free advertising campaign for all of us.
So to all those new Salon bloggers: welcome to the revolution, folks! Now go write some good stuff we can all link to.
Update: Dave Winer provides his thoughts on the deal: “Salon is granting my wish — they’re opening their site to amateur authors… As they often do, Salon is leading the way. They are the first publication to offer such a service to its community. We are proud to enable this innovation with our Radio UserLand technology.”

A Blogger’s Guide to Surviving Worldcom

Yup, Worldcom is going for Chapter 11 protection, following its stock doing a remarkable impression of that boat from Harrison Ford’s latest (i.e., diving fast and so radioactive nobody wants to touch it). Expect “Women of Worldcom” in Playboy soon; lots of lawsuits, and many, many fun anti-trust discussions about which ex-Baby Bells are allowed to buy which parts of the corpse.
But WorldCom isn’t some irrelevant venture like Enron (energy?) or Andersen (accounting?). WorldCom runs the Internet, and the Internet, as we all know, matters.
So it is with some concern that I greet the nervous speculation now appearing that, should WorldCom truly bite the corporate big one, ‘net might indeed go dark. And being a pessimistic, plan-for-the-worst kind of fellow, I think we all must address the primary concern of all Americans should the Internet fail: how the hell will we keep blogging?
I submit to you, therefore, the following Disaster Recovery Plan, in the spirit of preparedness. Should the Internet fail, I would suggest all bloggers immediately implement this plan: for if we don’t, the — well, you know the drill.
Blogging Disaster Recovery Plan
Equipment Required: Detailed street maps for entire U.S., cellphone, credit card and/or cash, one (1) magic marker, one 4′ x 3′ sheet of posterboard
Step 1: Locate the nearest copy shop. KinkosTM preferable, but any with PC access will do.
Step 2: Rent a PC and type your first post-Internet blog entry. Suggested topics include why it’s all Bush’s fault; why it’s all the Democrats fault, and why it’s all Robert Fisk’s fault.
Step 3: With your magic marker, draw the image of your (former) blog home page on your posterboard sheet.
Step 4: Print out your first blog entry, and make about 100 photocopies. (Unless you’re Glenn, in which case, make about 30,000).
Step 5: Exit the copyshop, and select a well-trafficked nearby streetcorner.
Step 6: Displaying your new home page posterboard prominently, begin handing out copies of your first blog entry to random passers-by. Shouting out your headline, town-crier style, is permissable but should be undertaken with caution. Headlines like this are OK, headlines like this are liable to draw unwelcome attention from the local constabulary. Do not be discouraged if few of your fellow citizens initially accept the gracious gift of your prose; remember, you are now on the cutting edge of the newest of new media, and pioneers must always face initial resistance. Endeavour to persevere!
Step 7: As soon as you have positioned yourself at your new home-corner, call Dave Winer on your cell phone and let him know you’ve updated your blog. Dave will be standing on a streetcorner somewhere near the exact geographic center of the U.S., and will be keeping a list of all recently updated weblogs on a (particularly large) sheet of posterboard.
Step 8: Now for the key to preserving our way of life as we know it: links! If your blog entry contains a link to another blogger, ensure that you have (using your U.S. street maps) prepared detailed directions for how to get from your streetcorner to your fellow bloggers streetcorner. With every copy of your blog entry that you distribute, also include a copy of the directions. Where appropriate, you may wish to substitute airline flight schedules or Amtrak timetables for more distant bloggers.
Step 9: When you run out of copies, return to your copy shop, and repeat steps 2-7.
If we all stick together, we can transition to the new media world gracefully, with minimal interruption to our blogging activities. I urge each of you to begin stockpiling your Kinkos access cards and magic markers now.
Finally, TTLB has also learned that the nice Pyra folks at Blogger will also be providing services for the new blog paradigm. For current Blogger users, Pyra will dispatch low-paid interns to stand on your streetcorners for you, freeing you up for valuable blogging. To ensure that the transition from your current online blogging to the new paradigm is as smooth as possible, the interns will of course fail to show up much of the time, and will also occasionally wander off, taking your blog copies with them.

Ecosystem: Update on Hold

Folks –
Just FYI, I did try to do an Ecosystem update this weekend. Boy, did I try — I spent a good chunk of both Saturday and Sunday morning on it. However, there were a huge (over 100) number of new blogs requesting addition, and I ran into some particularly bad snags. Will try to get it done sometime soon, but for now, please be patient…
-NZB

Meryl: The Musical

Now she’s got Weblogger’s Lament — a catchy little diddy that’s got a beat you can troll to.
Fits in nice with our little discussion below…. check it out…
-NZB

Overheard on the line at the Jones Household

Hello and good day to you, fellow American! You’ve reached the automated voice response system for TIPS.
Please choose from one of the following options:
– If you’d like to report suspicious behavior by a co-worker, press 1
– If you’d like to report suspicious behavior by a friend, press 2
– If you’d like to report suspicious behavior by a family member, press 3
– If you’d like to report suspicious behavior by yourself, press 4
*3*
Thank you! You’ve chosen to report suspicious behavior by a family member. Please select from the following options the one which best describes the behavior which you wish to report:
– If your family member is stockpiling fertilizer and you don’t live on a farm, press 1
– If your family member describes Bill Maher as a “great American”, press 2
– If your family member refuses to accept that President Bush’s business practices have been fully investigated and are a dead issue, press 3
– If your family member refuses to accept that Vice President Cheney’s business practices have been fully investigated and are a dead issue, press 4
– If your family member is performing Google searches such as “build atomic bomb how-to” and “WMD where to buy”, press 5
– If your family member greets each appearance of President Bush on television by shouting “You will perish soon, infidel!”, press 6
– If your family member has expressed doubt in the fundamental strength and decency of the American System of Capitalism, press 7
For all other suspicious behavior, press 9
*7*
Thank you! You’ve reported that your family member has expressed doubt in the fundamental strength and decency of the American System of Capitalism. To help us better understand your family member’s behavior, please select from one of the following options:
– If your family member doesn’t accept and understand that their 401K losses are simply a part of the genius of capitalism, press 1
– If your family member has made comments such as “Maybe that Marx character was right” or “God bless the French”, press 2
– If your family member refuses to accept that if they don’t buy consumer goods, the terrorists will have won, press 3
*3*
Thank you! You’ve reported that your family member does not accept that if they don’t buy consumer goods, the terrorists will have won. To help us better understand your family member’s behavior, please indicate what kinds of consumer goods they are reluctant to purchase by selecting from one of the following options:
– If your family member is reluctant to purchase food, press 1
– If your family member is reluctant to purchase clothing, press 2
– If your family member is reluctant to purchase household goods, press 3
– If your family member is reluctant to purchase properly-licensed digital entertainment, press 4
– If your family member fails to recognize that not watching the commercials on network television is a form of theft, press 5
– If your family member is reluctant to purchase the latest movie-tie-in games and toys, press 6
*6*
Thank you! You’ve indicated that your family member is reluctant to purchase the latest movie-tie-in games and toys, some of the finest products that our American System of Capitalism has to offer. To better understand your family member’s behavior, please select from one of the following options:
– If your family member refuses to purchase the joint Minority Report / Office of HomeLand Security Junior PreCrime Investigator kit, press 1
– If your family member refuses to purchase the joint Austin Powers / CIA / FBI Master of Disguise Makeup Kit (including Austin Powers Teeth and J. Edgar Panties) press 2
– If your family member refuses to purchase the joint Lilo & Stitch / Immigration and Naturalization Service video “Welcome to America, Now Assimilate, Little Alien!”, press 3
*3*
Thank you! Although failure to purchase the Lilo & Stitch / Immigration and Naturalization Service video “Welcome to America, Now Assimilate, Little Alien!” is not yet a crime, hopefully it soon will be, after the passage of the USA-BUCKS (United Senators Advocating Buying Unlimited Crap in Key States) act, sponsored by Senator Hollings.
We already know where you live, of course, but to ensure we question the correct family member, please enter your name using the letters on your phone’s touchtone keypad:
*S* – *U* – *Z* – *I* – *E*
Thank you, Suzie! Now please enter your family member’s relationship to you:
– Press 1 if the family member you’ve described is your sister
– Press 2 if the family member you’ve described is your brother
– Press 3 if the family member you’ve described is your father
– Press 4 if the family member you’ve described is your mother
– Press 5 if the family member you’ve described is your child
For all other relationships, press 9
*4*
Thank you! You’ve indicated that the family member behaving suspiciously is your mother. Finally, one last question: please enter your age on the keypad:
*5*
Thank you, Suzie, and congratulations on joining the TIPS team! We’ll be sending a friendly agent by to check in on mommy soon. Have a great day!

I hope people link to this post about how all this trolling is going on.

The last week has been an interesting one for trolling. First, there was O’Neill’s now-infamous screed decrying the lack of quality in the blogosphere. I’ll allow Mr. O’Neill to summarize his manifesto himself by quoting from his opening paragraph:
“That’s it, I must speak out. I can hold my peace no longer. After two months of maintaining a weblog … I am shocked by the Blogosphere’s often poor quality of writing and its celebration of pithy opinion over considered judgement.”
(No, really. He actually writes like that).
What some folks don’t know is that Mr. O’Neill distributed a link to his post via an email blast to an unknown number of bloggers; myself included. (The number is unknown as he BCCed everyone).
Now, given that it was about bad blogging, and that O’Neill’s message read simply “I thought you might be interested in this….”, there are several possible interpretations:
A) He thought the people he mailed it to are paragons of bloggerly virtue, and would nod their heads vigorously, murmuring “Yes, yes, Brendan! You’ve put your finger on it!” and then journey forth to spread the Blogger Quality Gospel.
B) He thought those on the list were the worst examples of offenses against quality blogging, and graciously decided to share his wisdom with them in the hopes that one day they may aspire to the heights which he has already reached.
C) He’s a big troll.
Remember: When in doubt with multiple choice tests, go with C.
But Mr. O’Neill wasn’t only major troll this week: Saturday brought to my inbox (and many others) a note from Benjamin Fischer, who had an Alterman-bashing post to share. Ben, in his enthusiasm, sent an email to about fifty bloggers — an unlike Mr. O’Neill, did not BCC them:
Come look at my blog.
Have an interesting post. http://benfischer.blogspot.com/2002_07_14_benfischer_archive.html#78955888.
This led to some ugliness, when Kevin O’Donovan decided to Reply All, blasting Ben for his message (with all the rest of us copied in):

Benjamin:
I hope you do, or will soon, realize that what you have just done is
tantamount to:
I’ve just posted some OMG HOT HOT HOT new fully nude pictures of myself!
Come look at www.imaspammingidiot.com.
As a result, I will never, ever, read your blog again, and I hope others
will folllow.
Sincerely,
Kevin O’Donovan

Thankfully, the Reply Alls died down swiftly after that. Ben, to his credit, apologized later on his blog for the broadcast email; Kevin did not.
Anyway, thinking back on these incidents, I decided to toss out a few questions for discussion here.
1) Of these three, who’s the biggest troll?
2) What rules do you generally follow when trying to draw attention to your posts? Do you ever email them to other bloggers?
3) How do you feel about receiving email from other bloggers? What kinds of messages are likely to get your interest, and what kinds are likely to cause you to hit delete?
Please note that I’m not searching for ‘consensus’ on some code of blogger conduct, here. (I’ll leave that to Mr. O’Neill). In my mind, there can be and should be no consensus on these matters: every blogger is a rule of law unto themselves; they should conduct their blog business precisely as they see fit, not according to any imposed norms of behavior from “The Community”.
But I am curious to see how wide the spectrum of those varied approaches stretches; hence, the questions. I wait in curiosity…

The Ecosystem Proletariat Arises!

Hmmmm. has an interesting call-to-action for blogs that are currently ending up in the ‘insignificant microbe’ category of the Ecosystem:
I’m sure you’ve noticed that there are more of us than all the Higher Beings, Mortal Humans, Large Mammals, Rodents, Flappy Birds, Slithering Reptiles and Lowly Insects put together… We can help each other. If all of us Insignificant Microbes make an effort to link to other Insiginificant Microbes we can all move up in rank.
Most intriguing! Check it out in full.

Meryl’s Back. And She’s Pissed.

The pleasant clime of Virginia has not improved disposition. Au contraire — or maybe it’s just that she gets cranky when presented with anti-Semitic idiots.
The inside track says that this satisfying tirade is just the beginning, and that Ms. Y is going on a take-no-prisoners tear this week. In her sights are conservative bloggers, the suppression of free speech, and of course, yet more Ann Coulter bashing. Not to mention a stealth topic on the horizon that is sure to annoy, upset and perhaps outrage a significant part of the Blogosphere… stay tuned….

Sunday Afternoon Update

Folks –
Sorry for the confusion. However, real life is intruding a bit and blogging will be light to nonexistent for the next few days.
John Weidner is also similarly encumbered with real life, but he has put out a for continued self-organizing action on support for the people of Iran his blog. Check it out if you’re interested.
-NZB

From the Department of Fun Referrals

Found this one in my log:
Neat. Here’s the description of the polar bear from the site:
The polar bear is a mighty hunter of seals idiotarians. The most carnivorous of the bears, it is also the most patient. They will sit near a seal blow-hole apologist editorial board for hours, waiting, until the animal idiotarian “wisdom” surfaces. When it does, it is all over for the seal idiotarianism. One powerful blow from a forepaw devastatingly logical (and pithy) argument brings a swift meal victory for the bear and a swifter death for the seal idiotarianism of the day.
I, well, paraphrased a bit…

Things are a little different down there

Janes pokes fun at Sesame Street’s announcement that they will be adding a HIV-positive muppet to the famous cast:
Seasme(sic) Street is introducing a HIV+ woman character to its cast named “Krack Whore”. My sources tell me she will be discovered living in a dumpster not far from Oscar the Grouch’s and will pass on useful information to children such as which condoms can be recycled, how to identify which cops will cut you slack for favours, how to make a shiv from a coat hanger and a discarded broom handle, and how to find the best needle exchange program in the neighbourhood.
This is all very ha-ha-look-at-the-silly-liberals, until you notice that the character is being introduced only on the South African version of the program, where nearly 12% of the population is infected.
I think you can make legitimate arguments pro- and anti- this move, but personally, I don’t think it deserves mockery. But hey, maybe I’ve just got a deficent sense of humor when it comes to a continent where millions of people will die if they don’t get better education on what they’re doing wrong.
Addendum: I’d be less grumpy about this if I didn’t also see outfits like MSNBC making their Question of the Day “SHOULD KIDS LEARN ABOUT HIV ON SESAME STREET?” without bothering to provide any mention that the kids in question are South African kids.
Strong work, guys; hope you get some nice sensational reactions. Shame about the whole misleading the public you’re supposed to be informing thing, but hey, win some, lose some.
Correction Mmmm. Waiter! One order of crow, please. Moe of Occam’s toothbrush correctly points out that the stories do in fact say discussions are underway for bringing the character to other countries, including the U.S. I could have sworn I read the opposite this morning, but clearly I was hallucinating.
As they say in the pro business, “TTLB apologies for the error.” My bad.

IranWatch: Let the purges begin

The beat goes on: Now Ayatollah Ali Khamenei is actually admitting that maybe Ayatollah Taheri had a point about the whole corruption thing:
The Iranian supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, has said he agrees with some of the strong criticism made by a prominent religious leader who resigned earlier this week…
Ayatollah Jalaluddin Taheri resigned on Tuesday, denouncing the way Iran was being run and creating a political storm.
Iran’s Supreme National Security Council later banned the country’s media from reporting reaction to Ayatollah Taheri’s comments.
But in a letter – broadcast repeatedly on state radio – Ayatollah Khamenei told Ayatollah Taheri that he supported some of the strong criticism of the regime.
He also appealed for calm and accepted the resignation of the prayer leader in the central city of Isfahan.
“I also have been saying for several years that we have to mobilise all possible means to fight poverty and corruption,” Ayatollah Khamenei said.
He also addressed other matters raised by the cleric, such as creating jobs for the young.
But he warned: “Any unjust criticism encourages enemies and counter-revolutionaries who benefit from the support of the United States and Israel”.
That’s the BBC, of course. (Hello, CNN? MSNBC? NYT? WaPO? ANYBODY? )
I’d expect to see some high-profile house cleaning soon; bigwigs getting fired and the like. The interesting question will be whether they’ll toss out some token actually corrupt mullahs or whether they’ll just use this as an excuse to further purge the government of reformist elements.
Update: Aziz Poonawalla is skeptical that Khameini truly has the best interests of his citizens in mind. So am I, if I didn’t make it clear enough.

It’s only slander when NPR says it

points us to a story on NPR attempting to remove-foot-from-mouth regarding a story it ran insinuating that the Traditional Values Coalition might be linked to last year’s anthrax attacks.
TVC’s director, Andrea Lafferty, is quoted by Variety in response to NPR’s apology as follows:
“A simple apology today is not enough. Eight million people heard this libelous, slanderous report,” … But Lafferty termed the correction “pathetic” and said all NPR staffers must have “graduated from the school of anti-Christian bigotry.”
Hmmm. Sounds like NPR screwed up bigtime on this one. But perhaps Ms. Lafferty’s lawyers might want to remind her that responding to slander with your own slander is not the best legal strategy in the world?

Nevermind that morality stuff, actually, we think killing children is a “Heroic” Tactic

Hey. I missed one on Monday from GlobalNewsWatch (which if you’re not reading regularly, you should be):
Khilafah.com is reporting that 150 Palestinian intellectuals have signed a petition denouncing an earlier petition by other Palestinian intellectuals. The document condones suicide bombing and calls for the destruction of Israel.
See Howard’s site for the details. I’ve started to grow numb to this kind of murderously sucicidal stupidity from certain parts of the Palestinian world, but I try to remind myself to notice anyway, if only to do my small part to ensure that the rest of the planet has the opportunity to see reality as it is. I can take no responsibility for whether anyone accepts that reality or clings to convenient (and often more pleasant) delusions that all that is needed is more negotiation, more communication, and better understanding between peoples and it will All Be OK.
Would that it would be so…