Rumsfeld:

 

“We’re functioning … in the Information Age, where people are running around with digital cameras and taking these unbelievable photographs and then passing them off, against the law, to the media, to our surprise, when they had not even arrived in the Pentagon.”

Not just ‘running around’, but emailing them, sending CD�s, posting them on the internet. What is more, soldiers are using emails to stay in touch with families, beg for care packages, tell the truth to their friends, send their own unit atrocity snaps, and just plain blog.

The war in Iraq is leaking like the proverbial sieve, and digital communications has created a whole new nightmare for the spindoctors.

This email, for instance, (via Soul Pacific) came from an unnamed official in Iraq to inspire stories in the alternative media:

Despite the progress evident in the streets of Baghdad, much of which happens despite us rather than because of us, Baghdadis have an uneasy sense that they are heading toward civil war. Sunnis, Shia, and Kurds professionals have say that they themselves, friends, and associates are buying weapons fearing for the future. CPA is ironically driving the weapons market: Iraqi police sell their ‘lost’ U.S.-supplied weapons on the black market; they are promptly re-supplied. Interior ministry weapons buy-backs keep the price of arms high.

Now, according to Kathryn Cramer, it seems as if the US Department of Defence has ordered private supplier Kellogg, Brown, & Root to cut the email service to ordinary soldiers.

Hence, the frontline blogger Ginmar is left to say:

I might be getting transferred within the next week to another post. At the very least, KBR is not allowing any private computers on their system for the next ninety days.

Meanwhile the Seymour Hersh article in the New Yorker which first blew the story of Abu Ghraib in detail is available around the world � it’s currently top of its page on Google.

The Bush administration is losing the propaganda war in a breathtaking tangle of disgusting images, shot on and transmitted by digital technology.

The American blogosphere has gone berserk about Abu Ghraib. Cursor, in one sustained passage across the first half of May nails the whole story from left to right, dignified to sleazy.

Kevin Drum adds a lucid analysis of the Right’s response – they are busy deciding that the War is still good and noble but the Bushites are too stupid to run it – and points to The New Republic’sOnline Campaign Journal which looks at Bush’s popularity figures at this stage of the campaign. 46% and sinking.

Josh Marshall adds a wonderful detail � the father of Major-General Antonio Taguba who wrote the damning Army report on Abu Ghraib was the son of a WW2 prisoner of war � who survived the Bataan Death March. I can imagine the values he got from his kitchen table. Colonel David Hackworth, who has spent a lifetime fighting for front line soldiers against an incompetent army,helped the story to go public. In a democracy, sooner or later evil collides with righteousness, which has been waiting in the wings for decades. Mind you, the result is never really justice.

An Australian perspective comes from Gary Sauer-Thompson. The Howard government is running exactly the same line as the Americans � it�s a few bad apples, it’s being dealt with, it’s abuse not torture, nothing to see here move along move along you’re obstructing the pavement.

Cursor sums up so much in a single bitter remark:

Pat Tillman’s younger brother delivers an anti-eulogy at a memorial service for the former NFL player-turned-soldier. “Pat isn’t with God,” he said. “He’s f — ing dead. He wasn’t religious. So thank you for your thoughts, but he’s f — ing dead.

Road to Surfdom shares a job application for a private enterprise torturer (sorry, ‘Interrogator/Intel Analyst Team Lead Asst’) and continues the Dunlop analyses of adminstration meltdown accounts, this time concentrating on Joseph Wilson’s book which is not called ‘Suckered In Niger by a Certain Adminstration’ but could be.

Blogger on a Cast Iron Balcony is inspired to celebrate the approaching Danish Royal wedding, particularly by the Prime Minister�s gift of a stand of trees. How can she avoid a small segue into environmental politics, and some ironic remarks about the law of the sea and a certain ship from a neighhbouring country?

The much respected Virulent Memes has spiffed up the site so it is much more readable, and posted a nationally fascinating item on the nightlife in Albury. Fortunately, he also finds an accountof British charity Breakthrough Breast Cancer’s fabulous (or stupid) outbreak of moral integrity. They turned down a one million pound donation from Nestle, makers of infant baby formula in the developing world.

Back Pages muses over Costello’s rattling of his leadership cage, Catallaxy reflects on our undergraduates’ desire to stay at Uni in their home towns, The Daily Slander wants New Zealand PM Helen Clark to go, Bargarz is tracking the questions about the possibly faked Daily Mirrortorture photos, while Boynton brings peace to the blogosphere with a gracious study of ping pong and Laputan Logic meditates on Francis Galton’s camp in Ovamboland.

On more political matters, Kim Weatherall is covering the submissions to the Senate Select Committee to the Free Trade Agreement, while Hot Buttered Death pokes fun at Fred Nile (such a sweet old man), Southerly Buster shows us that the Timor Gap dispute is an issue that Will Not Die, and Kick and Scream runs amok with a new digital camera.

Ken Parish brings his experience as a lawyer for Aboriginal communities to the problem of indigenous social structures in the deployment of government resources. He calls it ‘gross inefficiency and corruption’:

These problems are too seldom discussed. Few people “down south” even know about them, and many of those who do are reluctant to highlight them for fear that they’ll be seized on by latter-day Hansonites for short-term political advantage.

Most wonderful bent post award of the week goes to Soul Pacific, for an exhaustive but concise study of ways of dealing with your data if you die. Safety deposit boxes? Cryogenics? How about software which automatically sends death notice emails and contacts your bank, employer and personal blog if you don�t use the system for a set period. It’s a nightmare if you get stuck away from your computer for too long.

Lest we feel too grim, the Anglo-American-Australian group blog Crooked Timber resurrects a statement from English television writer in an interview three weeks before his death from cancer:

I can celebrate life. Below my window there�s an apple tree in blossom. It’s white. And looking at it, instead of saying, “Oh, that’s a nice blossom’, now, looking at it through the window, I see the whitest, frothiest, blossomest blossom that there ever could be. The nowness of everything is absolutely wondrous. If you see the present tense, boy, do you see it. And boy, do you celebrate it.

Custody of Blogjam now passes from my wearied hands to Sedgwick. He will bring the dignity of a true Governor-General while I shall go back to polishing the silver.

Barista

Margo: Thanks David. Great work!

International news in the blogosphere this week was dominated by the Abu Ghraib and Queen�s Lancashire Regiment torture stories. Making Light collects the American perspectives and connects it to the siege of Fallujah that was, and wasn’t, and admits to being emotionally gutted:

 

I’ve taken down my flags and put them away until after the war is over. I love my flag and my country as much as ever, but I�m mourning actions that have been committed by our troops, under our banner.

Juan Cole, a Middle East expert, tracks the effect of the scandal on the Middle East and reports that Abdul Basit Turki, Iraq’s first Minister of Human Rights, has resigned:

In November I talked to Mr Bremer about human rights violations in general and in jails in particular. He listened but there was no answer. At the first meeting, I asked to be allowed to visit the security prisoners, but I failed,” he said. “I told him the news. He didn’t take care about the information I gave him.”

Whiskey Bar reports on Lebanese journalist Hisham Melhem, who calls for Abu Ghraib to be razed, an idea also defended trenchantly by John Quiggin.

In Australia, Bargarz provides a useful summary of the Right’s reaction.

Domestically, we writhed with hubristic delight before our humble keyboards at the antics of Lawsey, Jonesy, Flintsey and Howardsey.

Kick and Scream points out that Keating also hung around Laws before wandering off in 1996.Back Pages adds a survey of cartoons, and makes a small skipping run at the fundamental question: how should we appoint positions like head of the ABA anyway? roadtosurfdom points to the valuable collation of key documents of the Communications Law Centre,� rare in such a small society.

Leading the conga line of funsters, Soul Pacific has some animated snarkiness with the protagonists, while The Governor General anxiously diagnoses their Psittacosis.

Media Dragon doodles good links around the topic, particularly with the National Civic Council’sprerelease extract of David Flint’s book: “Twilight of the Elites”. Utterly without pretensions himself, he wrote from his humble cell:

There can be no doubt that the elites suffered a devastating defeat in the Australian Federal election on November 10, 2001. Concentrated mainly in those inner city electorates in the Sydney-Canberra-Melbourne triangle, they managed to attract no more than 10% of the national primary vote.

Failure hurts soooo much.

Backpages posts the results of the latest newspoll, and runs them through the distinctive Sheil analysis machine:

All up, this is virtually a status quo result. Reading the tea leaves, and leaving aside the possibility of some sort of left field circuit breaker, at this stage I would still think Jack’s best chance is to go visit the GG as soon as he can, maximising his milkshake bounce and minimising his Iraq bog … which again spells August 7.

Hot Buttered Death finds a nineteenth century treatise on burning cats, which is at least more dignified than Geoff Honnor’s discovery that this very publication is fascinated by penile girth.

Downtrodden as she undoubtedly is, Wendy James explores the exercise value of housework, the perils of childhood athsma and the pleasures of the pub. Perhaps she has caught some of the archaic diseases such as ‘Domestic Illness’ or ‘Humour Flux’ that Boynton has found.

Southerly Buster provides a rundown on the current state of play in the Indonesian elections as Bambang increases his lead over Megawati:

This is good news. Golkar seems to have backed the wrong horse, although presumably the Golkar endorsement will lift Wiranto above his current standing of 2.2%. Gus Dur is in severe difficulties because the KPU has issued a regulation excluding blind candidates. I plan on following the IFES standings through the campaign over the next month.

At the technical workshops out the back of the blogosphere (somewhere between Highway 69 and Desolation Row with a manhole that somehow leads to the corridors of power), the economists have been bashing out their positions. Starting here, Catallaxy has several analyses of the polls that suggest the public wants more services rather than less tax:

I’ve just finished a book chapter on opinion about taxing and spending, and I think the high numbers in these polls come from the assumption that there is a surplus to be distributed somehow. The surplus seems to be viewed as a sunk cost, so spending it on services will not create any extra tax pain. When the money is still in taxpayers’ pockets there is much more tax resistance.

John Quiggin, meanwhile, is looking at the highly technical economic benefits of the FTA.

After we anxiously waited over the weeks for a somnolent Gummo Trotsky to surface, he has posted a terrifyingly accurate rant about one small incident on a Melbourne tram:

I should have known you were going to be trouble – I did sense that you were going to be trouble – when you stood beside the aisle seat where I’d parked my bag and demanded that I move over. Like a damned fool I picked up my bag and dropped it my lap and went back to my book.�

It helps to explain why we (to be formal about it) Melburnians are the kind of people we are.

Last week, I asked for useful links on the Palestine-Israel conflict. You provided a large list – too large to transpose with all those fiddly codybits – so you can find the list in the comments atBarista.

NEXT WEEK: Who are the commenters you particularly like reading? Post suggestions to here.Just to start you going and off the top of my late night head, I really enjoy John Isbell, the Bahnisch mob (father and son), Gummo Trotsky, Dave Ricardo, Jill Rush, Jack Strocchi, Steve Edwards, Derrida Derider, Sedgwick and Geoff Honnor (among others)….

Google them and see what I mean.

One of the great virtues of the blogosphere is the way it can push radio and TV transcripts into the public debate. Twisted images of the week come from last Thursday�s interview on Triple J’s Hack with George Gittoes, found by Troppo Armadillo. The audio files are there only till Thursday the 29th; maybe they will post a transcript.

 

It covers George�s frequent returns to Iraq, this time to make a film about music in a time of war. He moves through a network of musicmanic mates, balanced by his memories of Afghanistan and Timor. People tell him they expect a twenty year cycle of civil war fed by payback. They ask him for help to come to Australia. They grieve for a heavy metal guitarist murdered by fundamentalists.

To Gittoes, Baghdad seems full of contemporary Western music. In corners, hiding from the religious maniacs, is a flourishing Iraqi rock and roll scene. In tank and humvee territory, the camps and trucks echo to the competitive rants of ghetto hiphoppers and wailing guitarists composing music to dead comrades. They are mixed in computerised studios mounted under army trucks, and sent as CDs to mourning families at home. The PC apocalypse.

Road to Surfdom recasts the war in Iraq as something from Mad Max. Since the Humvee manufacturers turned production to civilian versions, there are not enough armoured bodies produced. So the Humvee lite, or SUV as the troops call it, has been deployed instead, and the soldiers are jury rigging them with anything they can find. Beyond the jokes is the brainbending recurrent story that the army of the richest nation in the world is badly equipped.

Elsewhere, Iraq seems to be in a state of strategic stasis as the Iraqi Governing Council revealed its new national flag. Amazingly, as Josh Marshall reports, it looks like the flag of Israel. That is a small problem � our very own ubereconomist John Quiggin is reporting that the June 30th handover of power is a sham:

Anybody silly or corrupt enough to join the new ‘government’ will be in the same position as the Iraq governments of the British Mandate/Treaty period, taking responsibility for policies dictated by a foreign occupying force, while having no effective power over anything that matters.

The specialist Iraq tracker Agonist has a useful roundup of military activity in Southeast Asia. And Body and Soul has a doorway into the extraordinary attempt by right wing Catholics to deny John Kerry communion because he supports abortion.

Anzac Day put the blogosphere in a contemplative mood. Surprisingly, the Right tended to avoid it, except for a thoughtful piece on Paul and Carl’s Daily Diatribe (via Troppo) which manages to coolly and emotionally invert nationalism. Back Pages takes us back to C.E.W. Bean, the official WW1 historian:

By mid-August around Pozieres and the British sector of the Somme the road and the trenches were strewn with the dead. The shrapnel left human bodies ‘mere lumps of flesh’. A lieutenant cried like a little child. Some struggled and called out for their mothers, while others blabbered sentences no one could make out. The moans of the wounded and dying were heard above the din of battle…

Tim Lambert, normally writing on science, brings a sad photograph and a homely family touch which bites almost deeper than the horror. Gary Sauer-Thompson asks about “Anzacs, regionalism and national identity”, with powerful illustrations to break up his challenging polysyllables. I added my usual pacifist outrage.

With a blogosphere infiltrated with academic lawyers, economists, and public moralists, the Timor Gap and its oil revenues were bound to set the keyboards rattling. Troppo Armadillo started the ball rolling with a learned and lucid opinion about the legal position and the government�s hardline machinations, aided and abetted by Gary Sauer-Thompson, who added the links to DEFAT and other bloggers.

Cast Iron Balcony runs a fine line in moral outrage: Can nations be selfish? Bloody oath they can!

Meanwhile, Latham�s alleged plagiarism was a gift to bloggers. Of course everyone divided on partisan lines, but various commenters revealed themselves as sometime speechwriters. Chris Sheil at Back Pagesconfessed to popping bits of Gorbachev into a National Party minister�s speeches, while ‘Nabakov’ admitted:

I’ve “borrowed” stuff from sources as diverse as CS Lewis, Ian Fleming, Simon Schuma, Bruce Sterling, Larry Ellison, Nye Bevan and Sir Richard Burton.

Andrew Norton took up the debate from the right, but was not concerned:

Yes, sure, it is better to be original, and if you can’t to acknowledge your sources. But Latham’s offence is at most very trivial.

Hot Buttered Death is a dab hand at the outrageous story. He located a pretty tale about a homeless student who lived in the New York Public Library for seven months – and ran a blog from his nest. Soul Pacific has found a new BBC game show, about soldiers who solve humanitarian crises in the Third World. Let the soulfull describe why it�s such a sick idea.

To temper outrage, The Spin Starts Here (normally so acerbic) creates an endearing vision of shared households and a younger brother barely more lively than a tree sloth.

Yobbo, never endearing, attempts a defence of McDonalds on the grounds that the horrible filmed experiment in which someone makes themselves sick on the stuff is actually cheating.

Gummo Trotsky, possibly inspired by last week’s story of his unaccustomed silence, has now turned his coyness into 34 comments. How much further can it go?

Sadly, Jason Soon at Catallaxy touched my heart with the news that John Maynard Smith, theoretical biologist and inspiring provocateur, has died.

Last week, I asked for news of small treasures. Here they are:

* Wood’s Lot poems, pictures and ideas from Canada,

* Tooles – A Sydney journalist hunts for work and the meaning of stuff…,

* J-Walk blog – some American fun,

* Lakatoi – cross-cultural observations and reflections by a former Australian Ambassador and High Commissioner, Dr James Cumes,

* (Southern Cross) Words – Cross-cultural observations and reflections by a former New Yorker on Sydney Australia,

* Dolebludger – a Tasmanian wonder,

* Henka’s Journey – more Tasmanian wonder, and

* Random Prose – stuck at the moment on Hamas and the NBL, but has lighter moments.

I have two which always inspire me:

* Boynton – wry, writerly and with a lovely sense of the found picture, and

* Laputan Logic – a genuine sense of wonder. And from Melbourne.

NEXT WEEK: What are the good sites that cover the Israel/Palestine conflict? Suggestions to Barista.

***

Blogjam6 by Barista, Heartstarters for the hungry mind.

David Tiley is standing in for Tim Dunlop for the next four weeks. He is a writer, script editor, teacher and occasional director who works in film and multimedia, particularly on documentaries, and has done his bit as an arts bureaucrat. His blog Barista tries to find humour in a deadly serious world.

 

Jozef Imrich at Media Dragon is a prince of the link. This very Tuesday, for instance, he carries enough connections to deep thought about the nature of blogging to torture the rest of us with unaccustomed self reflection.

Gary Sauer-Thompson has a reflective but highly conceptual chew on the issues, on the grounds that:

…the media has become a battlefield for those who hold that a healthy, participatory democracy requires noncommercial access to the tools of communication.

Does this mean we have become important by accident? Press Think provides a potpourri of ideas for a BloggerCon at Harvard, which is enough to make me fear that the medium will stop being fun.

The NYT account of this (thanks Jozef) adds a note of squalor:

“Soon, advertisers will be able to say “I want to buy ads on 25 different Web logs in Southern California written by women who drive humvees,” and have the perfect audience at their fingertips, he said.”

We all need money, but bloggers are self selected against being a commodity – there are so many better ways of putting ourselves up for sale.

We Australians, of course, will die to preserve a sense of fun. Professor Bunyip, on enigmatic hiatus, threatened to return ten days ago but hasn’t. In his absence, we have only the moppet muggers of pretension atThe Spin Starts Here to keep the monstering light.

Gummo Trotsky is wrapped in a similar silence. He seems to be running a strange Giaconda game, where his not blogging makes us comment, until it dies away into silence. Now. Silence.

Cricket has given way to football, while After Grog is combining the two in one last hymn both to the Laragod and the Sex scandals. Drug scandals. Umpire abuse. Goal umpire abuse. Tribunal inconsistencies…which make up the AFL.

The Monday Experts section of Ubersportingpundit is a treasure, though Uberpundit Scott’s politics are not inclusive.

Chris Sheil, meanwhile, continues his public agony over his mistaken loyalty to a failing rugby team. Yobbo remains existentially true to a vision of the game which football would dearly like to deny. He will never be allowed to coach your childrens’ team:

My contribution to the game was limited to being involved in a 6 person brawl midway through the last quarter. Next week I’ll try to get a kick as well.

I don’t know what effect the bloggers are having on the Australian media. But I do know that any episodes of public stupidity will be paraded around the houses on a stick and barbecued on the hot griddle of sarcasm. Maybe we are starting to keep the bastards of the press honest.

Tim Lambert hunts pseudoscience and stooges for right wing pressure groups with the calm zeal of the truly outraged. Gun control, crime statistics, global warming and passive smoking are grist to his mill. Hisinterest in the statistical arcana of epidemiology (you think this is a meaningful statistic? THIS is a meaningful statistic) has spread to Quiggin, parts one and two.

It is one thing to hurl facts across the blogosphere; to undermine the models and ideas of science itself is a truly dirty trick. Science ain’t the law and adversarialism don’t play.

Back Pages, in a more serious vein, has caught the NSW Leader of the Opposition (who? where?) in an extraordinary piece of pure political obscenity. Rather than a raft of Boards and State Authorities and Quangos and the Salvos (yes, in welfare, even the Salvos), Brogden says:

if you are the minister for transport you should be responsible for our railways. If you are the minister for utilites you should be responsible for our water supply. If you are the minister for health you should be responsible for our hospitals. That is our philosophy. No ifs or buts.

He will be telling us the Government is elected to govern next. That means, of course, we would go back to the olden days when we, the public, knew who to biff if something went wrong. And Ministers used to do this weird thing called “resigning.”

Catallaxy has taken up the question of our faith in government from its particular free market perspective. Talking about services like schools and hospitals which are historically not Big Ticket monopolies like trains, Andrew Norton says:

In my own research into privatisation, the best way of predicting public opinion is to look at the historic ownership of that sector. Where it is historically private, private ownership is most popular. Where it is historically public, public ownership is most popular. When there is a mix, that too is reflected in opinion.

Whatever it is, we like it like its always been.

There is a reminder, incidentally, at Kick and Scream, about spam. The Evil Ones can rip email addresses off comments, and there are various ways to hide them.

Internationally, the news continues to be grim. Swanker looks at the tenth anniversary of the Rwanda genocide.

Juan Cole continues to track the politics and slaughter in Iraq. Tim Dunlop guts Howard’s logic on the Spanish withdrawal – and points out that Zapatero actually did what he promised, which at least is refreshing.

Southerly Buster reminds us that Negroponte the Nasty is now U.S. Ambassador to Iraq. And I found a pair of harrowing, chaotic tales of the war – a circus worker turned humanitarian, and a woman soldier’s first night uner fire.

Fortunately, we can seek solace in our local individualists. Hot Buttered Death can be relied upon to find any idiocy going, while Gianna is falling in love with her baby again:

And we spent a lot of time just looking at each other and smiling. I’m pretty sure he felt the same way. I looked at him and finally it hit me that I’ve made a little person.

No-one else can get away with that. In a single day, Boynton manages to swing from walking a dog in memory of Wodehouse to the Jerusalem Chainsaw Massacre.

Loobylu is celebrating Autumn, while Invisible Shoebox is taking the world’s wisest ants to Barcelona.

The Governor-General has a tribe of librarians to comb his magnificent collection of comic writing. How else could he find an old Bernard Levin remark about Michael Foote to describe Bush on television:

I felt like a member of Greenpeace watching a month old seal pup beating its own brains out.

If individual blogs can become all self important and angsty, the group blogs can turn into a public soap opera. Witness Troppo Armadillo, as Ken Parish introduces a new flame, who turns out to have a mind of her own thank you very much, Woodsy discusses investment advice, and Geoff Remains Poised.

In the middle of this blog domesticity, Wayne talked about the right to die. And I know, as I reread it in this context, what blogging is for. Go there and let it work on you.

NEXT WEEK: small treasures. Use the comments at Barista to tell me those exquisite blogs that seem to be ignored. You all know some.