Where are Salam Pax and Raed Jarrar?

Collected posts of Salam al-JanabiThe BBC has an update on Iraqi bloggers. Riverbend is back, she’s now a refugee in Syria. Nabil is in Jordan. “Zappy” is in the UK. 24stepstoliberty now writes from California.
 
Livesstrong and Najma are in Mosul. Last-of-Iraqis writes from Baghdad and shares the dashed-syntax with neurotic-iraqi-wife from the Green Zone.
 
September last year, Raed Jarrar, namesake of Where is Raed? was not permitted to board a JetBlue plane at JFK because he wore a t-shirt which read “We will not be silenced.” Salam al-Janabi, aka Salam Pax the Baghdad Blogger last posted to Fat Whiner on July 2006, and made a CNN video in April.

COS PROG BLOGS

PROGRESSIVE BLOGGERS OF COLORADO SPRINGS:
 
CS Action -Mark Lewis
eHippy
Girls Gone Apeshit .com (gone)
Justice & Peace Now -TA
Keys To Island Cabin
Meta Critical
Newspeak -Aaron Retka
Non-Prophet
Not My Tribe -Brother Jonah, Tony Logan, Eric Verlo, Marie Walden
Point Of Few
Sue Sun 40 -Sue Spengler
Thomas Mc -Thomas McCullock

OTHER LOCAL BLOGGERS:

Atomic Elroy’s Trinity Project
Jeff Caylor
Darksandal
Dollar Blog
Eucharisto
Freethinkers of Colorado Springs
Friar Tuck’s Fleeting Thoughts
girl and geek
Just Another Pretentious Fuck
Keys To Island Cabin
The Manitou Mule
Thomas Mc
The Mondys
Phil Mondy
Movable Nu
Natural Inferior
The Ready Room
Red Wolf Crossing
The roBlog
Standard Deviation
The Taste Like Chicken Blog
Threshing Machine
Toilet Paper Blog
Vodkapundit & The Weblog of Tomorrow
WaitressBlog
Where the Rain Gets In
The Window Facing the Street

Solidarity vs Disintegration?

Moments of crisis always expose group weaknesses. Crises always create stress, and stress causes people to blame others and most espcially others that they have been working closely with in some shape or form. Suffice it to say, that in the 2 weeks since police attacked pro-peace participants in the St. Patrick’s Day Parade here in Colorado Springs, many of those who oppose the continued US government occupation of Iraq have been finger pointing and second guessing each other, and otherwise fighting amongst ourselves. We have not exactly distinguished ourselves by being first in the Solidarity Department.

Meanwhile, while we have been throwing stones against each other over our interpretation of local events, the real world goes on. The US is moving to further spread the multiple wars it is already engaging in, into yet more and more countries. We face the almost immediate possibility that our government will soon drop its new generation of atomic toys onto yet one more country, most probably Iran. We have a country that has dissolved habeus corpus, and where a prisoner tortured for 5 years pleaded guilty last week, just to try to escape yet further torture while being held criminally at Guantanamo by our government. We have a country where its top ‘justice’ official, Attorney General Alberto Gonzalez, stands accused of lying to its top elected officials, accused of doing such by his second in command, no less. The real world, and its real events, goes on.

Unfortunately, I have found it hard to write much about these events of the last 2 weeks, simply because fellow bloggers online with me here at Not My Tribe have chosen to attack me and Brother Jonah instead of focusing on the real events taking place around the planet. Instead of closing lines in solidarity with those that oppose the US government war making, these fellow bloggers online at NMT have chosen to get themselves upset about the supposed misdeeds of me and Jonah.

Oh horrors of horrors! We talk out against capitalism in ‘tirades’, smother free speech of others, and hand out ‘provacative’ signs that endanger others just trying to have a nice stroll downtown! How nasty Brother Jonah and I have been, it seems? We even drove off a nice young man named Steve, who just wanted to express his solidarity with our cause, he said, though he opposed our methods sadly enough.

Quite frankly, I am ashamed of all of this nonsense from these fellow bloggers, one of who chose to remove himself as a contributor. I have been to multiple vigils in the last 2 weeks that have expressed solidarity with immigrants under the multiple attacks and ’roundups’ of them and their families, and vigils in opposition to the US government and its continual wars. Tomorrow, I will go to Denver and try to find a way to help organize with others, future protests against the new agressions the US government is out organizing. And Monday, it will be to attend yet another vigil against the US War Against Iraq, and also to try to get together a city wide rally to support the 7 people now facing criminal charges post St Paddy Day’s police attack. But this fellow blogger was so ashamed of what we had been doing and writing here, that he felt it necessary to stop being a co-contributor at NMT, no less! He is not with us now, because we were too ‘Either you are with us, or Against us’ for him. Shame on you, Brother Jonah for behaving so badly that this co-blogger felt this way!

Another co-blogger, also is angry about our actions engaged in recently. What better time to fight and accuse her co-bloggers here at NMT, than when she finds herself in agreement with The Gazette, in agrement that her fellow peacenics didn’t properly know how to behave themselves with the better class of people at the St Pat’s Day affair? Shame on us! But where was I now? I’m missing from photos she says! Something sinister must have been happening? Where were you, Tony?, she asked!

Solidarity versus disintegration? This is always the question when push comes to shove. It is the question that always turns up during difficult strikes. Which side are you on? Oh, but these co-bloggers say that is too much like Dubya to ask that question now! After all, the Prez too said that you are either with us, or against us. Our co-bloggers though now shout out, that we should be both with you and against you when push comes to shove! That way we can sway with how well the corporate press is manipulating the Average Janes and Joes amongst the general city population. And that way, they will not feel so extremist as to hold any one view very firmly with their co-bloggers, who are so horrible manipulative, it does seem.

All of this nonsense and accusations that has been put online recently against Brother Jonah and I is totally repulsive and shameful. It truly detracts from anybody’s desire to read us. What a mess and I apologize. Solidarity versus disintegration? I hope that Not My Tribe can get its act together, and not disintegrate? Disintegration at this moment would be particularly sad. It would happen under the pretense of being discussion though. That’s hardly what has been going on, and Solidarity would be much better.

Where are they now?

Whatever became of the children of Baghdad

If you do a Google search for images of Iraqi children, you’re led mostly to pro-war sites where war-bloggers are trying to foster the contortion that our soldiers love the children of Iraq. Operation Iraqi Children is a military sponsored project where concerned Americans can donate school supplies to the needy students of Iraq, for use in their newly painted schools.

Lee Greenwood’s bloody anthem

Trouble bringing giant Old Glory downI heard the Lee Greenwood anthem today for the last God-damn time.
 
“And I’ll proudly stand up, next to you,
and defend her still today.
‘Cause there ain’t no doubt I love this land.
God bless the USA.”

I’ll put this out to everybody singing along, with a special mention to the war bloggers who have been littering cyberspace with falsehood and cannot own up to it upon being exposed, unnotably Michelle Malkin, Glenn Reynolds at Instapundit, John Hinderaker at Powerline, Dan Curry at Reverse Spin, Bob Owens at Confederate Yankee, Rick Moran at Rightwing Nuthouse, Dan Reihl at ReihlWorldView, Charles at Little Green Footballs, Curt at Flopping Aces, and SeeDubya at Junkyard Blog.

So STAND the fuck UP you jingoist motherfuckers! Get your big dumb asses up NEXT TO our soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan and defend this land against the civilians trying to living there. Go kill poor people there to defend our freedom here. Then you can sing this damn anthem. Otherwise shut up. Your bellicosity is distracting you from noticing that we are not singing with you. Scary thought probably, the rest of us are not as dumb-as-fuck ignorant as you.

Time Magazine and You

I just chanced to see the cover of Time magazine at a check-out stand. I’d read about their dubious Person of the Year end-run: it was us, I mean, you. The cover was as I had read about it online, a picture of a computer monitor, over a keyboard, the screen reflecting back whoever had picked up the magazine. Person of the year: You. It stated. Because “You control the Information Age.” I would add one other caption: joke’s on You.

Why didn’t anyone tell me Time’s reflective screen was framed with web-video controls? That’s not the frame of a flat-screen monitor, that’s the frame of a YouTube video! Everyone thought Time was awarding 2006 to the you’s of the blogosphere. They’re commemorating the internet incarnation of America’s Funniest Videos! You, Buffoon! You, Stupid Pet Trick!

I’m as excited as the next about the potential of YouTube, but I think it would be too early to say that someone on a YouTube video has yet merited Person of the Year. The history of dance guy? Congressman “Macaca?” Borat and his trailers?

Time’s hat tip was interpreted as having addressed the internet’s new talking heads, the bloggers. That too I think would be decidedly premature. The tsunami of web public opinion is a phenom no doubt, and Time and its ilk could take more notice, but Person of the Year, that’s false praise for the immodest. And Time has clocked us there, bloggers are self-gloried public diarists.

Time gives it away with their big lie, telling us you control the information age, just as the telecommunications giants have succeeded in legislating a tighter rein. Bloggers and YouTubers are the torrent of information, yes. Time and Co hold the controls.

Time Magazine banality of puff

Dead presidentBagNewsNotes drew my attention to the cover of a recent Time Magazine, a posterized image of Iranian President Mahmmud Ahmadinejad. The photo was manipulated reminiscent of OJ’s mug being darkened for sinister effect.
 
Readers commented on Ahmadinejad being made a cartoon, or a throwback to student movement political posters. I’d put it back further. I think the photo editors at Time are after a tin-type look, suggesting the Islamic Revolution is profoundly backward, belonging to the century before last perhaps.

The composition of the picture, particularly the woodgrainish, oddly insufficient backdrop behind Ahmadinejad’s head, reminds me of the post-mortem photographs of dead outlaws in the American West. Pictures of the outlaws brought to justice, laid out semi-vertically against their wood-box coffins, were circulated in the old west to publicize their successful apprehension. This provided proof for everyone to see with their own eyes that a feared outlaw was dead.

Add to Ahmadinejad’s resemblance the dark hair and beard and I think this Time cover emulates a photograph made iconic in Latin America at least, spread around by our government as a warning to others: the Dead Che Guevara.

How do you suppose the Time editors excuse themselves for their art direction whim? Do they think readers will accept it as fair that one personage be accorded an intimate portrait on the cover of Time, and yet another receives a editorialized visage?

The editors at Time can’t expect their readers to remain naive for much longer. I’m encouraged by the trend in children’s TV cartoons to mock the manipulation toolbag of media artists. The cliche of Bambi Eyes for example is mocked from Spongebob to Jimmy Neutron. They make obvious the deliberate use of caricatured expressions when they are being manipulative. Our children’s media literacy will be greatly enhanced and Time’s techniques will have to become more sophisticated.

Haditha
I had a chance to peruse a copy of this issue at the dentist’s. Further inside is a profile of one of the marines, The Face of Haditha, on trial for a possible war crime in Haditha. Shooting 24 Iraqi civilians, some of them at point blank range. Sargeant Frank Wuterich speaks out, the headline reads, “for the very first time.” The layout features a large picture of Wuterich on the left and a brief bio and interview on the right. Let me cut to the meat of the article, Wuterich is not permitted by his lawyer to say anything about what happened at Haditha except that he believes with incredulity that the actions of he and his comrades were within their legal rules of engagement. Wuterich also ponders innocently why he has not been asked more by the military investigators about what happened at Haditha. Thus, Time Inc has slipped us two items: the suggestion of innocence, and the suggestion that the prosecutors are not after the truth.

Take a look at the photograph. Sargeant Frank Wuterich stands with his arms crossed in frank honesty. He’s got big brown eyes and he’s addressing us squarely, looking like our paperboy come to collect our subscription. He’s young, attractive as American Pie, with big doe eyes. He’s got a partially concealed tattoo on his forearm and in the article we read he has several. One tattoo he was reluctant to show the photographer, we’re told, is of a dagger skewering severed fingers and eyeballs, his wife “doesn’t like that one so much.”

Bloggers
On the issue’s back page is a whimsical article by book reviewer Lev Grossman defending himself against blogger Edward Champion who has been picking on him. Grossman’s piece is an honest rebuttal to a difference of opinion, but he ends it with the usual dismissal columnists use to trump their blogger counterparts, “at least I’m getting paid to write this.”

Paid by whom Mr. Grossman? By a media conglomerate which is distorting the news to an audience of readers less culturally savvy than a common child? Good for you.