BuzzMachine

Target the truth
: Ken Layne does some good reporting from his keyboard on kidnapped reporter Daniel Pearl; he reads much of Pearl’s reporting in the Wall Street Journal and concludes:

Daniel Pearl has been writing damning stories from the Muslim world for seven years. He has written about bin Laden, Iran’s fundamentalist government, the movement to topple Saddam and the various pipelines of money to the terrorists.

He was set up. And he was targeted because of his history of covering the most criminal states of the Middle East and Central Asia.

‘Jihad is no longer quite as cool an idea as it was…’
: There’s a great line from Salman Rushdie sparking column in the New York Times today. He worries about the anti-Americanism we face now — because we are to be envied and because we are to be envied more now that we have succeeded so quickly in Afghanistan. Even if there is peace in Palestine, Rushie says anti-American would continue because it:

…has become too useful a smokescreen for Muslim nations’ many defects ó their corruption, their incompetence, their oppression of their citizens, their economic, scientific and cultural stagnation. America-hating has become a badge of identity, making possible a chest- beating, flag-burning rhetoric of word and deed that makes men feel good. It contains a strong streak of hypocrisy, hating most what it desires most, and elements of self- loathing. (“We hate America because it has made of itself what we cannot make of ourselves.”) What America is accused of ó closed- mindedness, stereotyping, ignorance ó is also what its accusers would see if they looked into a mirror.

F the Olympics
: The Guardian reports that U.S. Olympic organizers have been instructed not to have either any overt shows of patriotism or tributes to the victims of 9.11 in the opening ceremonies.

That’s it. I’ve had it with the Olympics and believe we should not bother hosting them again.

They are an utterly discredited event. They are no longer about amateur sports. They are rife with corruption and payoffs and politics and drugs.

In Utah, the American taxpayer ended up footing the bill for development in Salt Lake City that will do no one but them any good. And I do not believe that the net result of hosting the Olympics is profit.

And now this affront.

Fisk Follies
: An especially, incredibly, disgustingly unbelievable Fisk in the Independent. He pleads for the release of his “friend,” Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl. But his rationale is typically Fiskian: He ‘s advising the terrorist kidnapper slime to let go of Pearl or else reporters will leave (as they did Beirut) and then the terrorist kidnappers’ story won’t be told; Fisk is playing flack to these scum.

Daniel’s kidnappers are now making an identical error. They gave all American journalists until midnight last night to leave Pakistan, the best way of ensuring that the suffering of tens of thousands of Afghan refugees, the chaotic, lawless Afghanistan which has emerged from America’s victory, the crisis in Kashmir and the plight of Pakistan’s millions of poor goes unrecorded, and all for a series of demands that will never be met by the United States.

The idiocy does not end there. He goes on to attack us for the way we are treating prisoners at Gitmo — even as he does not bother to attack these slime for keeping a reporter in chains with a gun to his head and threatening to kill him.

Now I happen to think that the treatment of the prisoners at Guantanamo Bay is outrageous, illegal, a scandal for a country that claims to be a democracy. I wrote here earlier that these men were being treated much as the Beirut hostages were treated, complete with the threat of death from drumhead courts. And ñ given the dangerous, infantile State of the Union speech which President Bush gave last week ñ I am not surprised that the US government saw nothing wrong with releasing those disgusting photographs of the shackled, hooded, drugged prisoners.

But much of the world’s anger at this scandal was only provoked after journalists had highlighted the conditions in which the men were held and in editorials and opinion columns explained why their treatment amounted to a form of revenge. Without reporters, we would not have been given such devastating eye-witness proof of the thousands of innocent Afghans killed in those American B-52 bombing raids, nor of the murder of Taliban prisoners by our so-called allies of the Northern Alliance.

But thisreally takes the cake! Fisk tries to claim he is a personal friend of Osama bin Laden’s and thus Osama will listen to Fisk’s appeal. Unfriggingbelieveable, this guy:

I don’t know if Osama bin Laden is alive. But I suspect he is. If so, he knows what is happening around him. I know him and he knows me. And so, if he has the power to do so, and if he reads this article ñ as I think he will if he is alive because my reports are often reprinted in Arabic and Pushtu ñ I want him to do everything he can to secure Daniel’s release.

What a bozo!

7th largest company, 5th Amendment, 1st biggest scam
: Ken Lay decides not to testify before Congress because they might be mean to him.

Pat Buchanan rears his ugly head
: I wasn’t going to post today. I’m too busy moping. But then I came across a Pat Buchanan interview at Beliefnet and that was enough to wake me out of staring stuppor long enough to cut-and-paste this. Inbetween arguing that America has been “deChristianized” (and when did we abandon the separation of church and state to become Christianized in the first place?) and that immigrants are ruining us (sweet), Buchanan argues that Democrats are immoral. When asked whether we are a divided or unified nation after 9.11, he said:

So thereís been tremendous unity behind this war, the sense that this is a moral war. But can this sentiment bring together a nation as divided as we were over the Florida returns? That was over something that went to the heart of what people believed. The best criterion to judge how people voted in 2000 was how often they went to church. People who went to church voted for Bush; people who rarely or never went to church voted for Gore. That is for me the moral and social divide in America. We donít believe the same way anymore. We donít believe in the same ideas of right and wrong, and morally speaking, we live on a different continent.

If only you lived in a different continent, Pat, you pig. And now I’ll crawl back into my hole.

Party arty

: Enjoy the scene in New Orleans during SuperBowl and Mardi Gras (and enjoy the fact that you’re not dodging drunks there yourself) via one of my proudest creations on the Internet: Bourbocam. Through one of our sites, Nola.com, we have a live camera on Bourbon Street — still and video — and we’ve added shows, complete with hosts and guests, during these busy party times. And the fun doesn’t stop there. Try KaraokeCam — a hoot and a half — plus the strategically placed and aptly named BeadCam and FlashCam. If you come during the day, use the archives to catch last night’s action. Enjoy.

New neighbor
: I’m enjoying the new blog, In the Looking Glass, by Charles Dodgson (though I wish all bloggers would give themselves small bios; you always want to know a little something about the new neighbors). His succinct words on Enron:

To anyone still wondering why Democrats aren’t as worked up yet about the Global Crossing “scandal” as we are about Enron: here’s what’s missing from Global Crossing. It turns out that the Cheney energy plan was a “virtual rewrite of an industry wish list supplied by former Enron chief Ken Lay”, in a face-to-face meeting with Cheney. The meeting also discussed the then-ongoing California energy crisis, at a time when the White House was refusing to meet with California elected officials, including the governor.

That’s in addition to what we already knew about Enron’s influence over the entire shape of Bush administration energy policy — like the way Lay personally got the administration’s head energy regulator bounced over a policy dispute.

I’m perfectly happy to slam Democrats when they prove themselves putty in the hands of private interests — as I’ve slammed the Democrat, Steve Peace, who shaped the California electricity deregulation bill for kowtowing to … well who’da guessed? … Enron.

But there’s a reason that a White House which lets reporters into the War Room is standing on “principle” about not revealing its dealings with Enron… and I’ll wager the principle involved is cya.

And on Tyson:

A thought on Mike Tyson: with his boxing career apparently washed up, there’s been some speculation that he might wind up going into pro wrestling. I don’t see it. Why would a reputable businessman like Vince McMahon sully his name and reputation by dealing with Mike Tyson?

I am way overdue updating my links….

Globos or groupies?
: So I was walking from one meeting to the next yesterday — lots of meetings, no time for blogging — and as I navigate up Times Square around cop after cop after cop (bless them) protecting not only Starbucks (mixed emotions on that one) and even Toys R Us, I see some young people, shabbily dressed, patching together cardboard signs on sticks and I think, Ah-ha, the first anti-everything, anti-globos to be spotted. Then I look at their sign: It’s pasted full of pictures of barely pubescent rock stars. They’re getting ready to scream their lung out across the street from the MTV studios. They’re groupies. Somehow, this made me feel good about the state of things.

Where’s my Moratorium button collection?
: OK, so I’ve turned from pacifist to hawk, in favor of our war against terrorism, and I’m making fun of the protesting twerps threatening to take on the evils of globalization and Starbucks. But that doesn’t mean I have lost my memory or good sense or ethics. I still remember that Richard Nixon was a lying slime who degraded the presidency and the nation and whose stubborn execution of the wrongful war in Vietnam split this nation and its generations. And so, my old dander was raised when I read an interview with Henry Kissinger in the FT, saying, smugly (of course) that Bill Clinton “really reflected the last flowering of the self-indulgent side of the Vietnam protests.” What a crock, Kissinger. The Vietnam protests were not self-indulgent; you were going to have us killed as we killed because you thought Communism was going to take over the world (how stupid does that look today?) in a land that — unlike Afghanistan — did not attack us or harbor our attackers; we attacked. So you insult Clinton and my generation in the same stale breath with which you defend Nixon: “There’s one problem about the Nixon period — the passions you encounter in people who have nurtured hatred for 30 years.” You bet, Hank. And don’t you ever forget it. [via Reductio Ad Absurdum]

Oh, Canada
: A column in the National Post says Canada has to help defend us from terrorists:

The United States, homeland security to the fore, will soon create a new military command to co-ordinate continental defence. What should Canada do? Remain aloof, ever fearful of a loss of more independence to the United States? Or join in as a partner, ready to work with the United States? What does the national interest demand?

To me, the Canadian national interest is as clear today as in 1940-41 and 1957-58. Since the United States will do what it must to protect its security, our choice can only be to participate as fully as we can. This way we can secure some role in shaping the decisions that will affect us. If we turn away, as the Council of Canadians and others prefer, we will have a form of sovereignty without meaning. Who can believe we are truly sovereign and independent if we have no share in taking the defence decisions that affect us?

From the pile to the pit
: A nice story in the Washington Post on the work at the World Trade Center, as The Pile becomes The Pit and they still find the remains of lives there: a yo-yo, a picture book, personal checks, personal notes, jewelry, people.