] A Republican member of the Senate Armed Services
] Committee dismissed Tuesday the outrage over the abuse of
] Iraqi prisoners by U.S. troops, saying Iraqis depicted in
] widely broadcast photographs probably had "blood on their
] hands."

Rush limbaugh runs it. It flys. So they pull the story a little further in and run it again. If it flys again we'll see if from more mainstream leaders...

CNN.com - GOP senator labels abused prisoners 'terrorists' - May 12, 2004

] Price of gas at a station in Santa Barbara, Calif.
] Tuesday morning May 11, 2004, was $3.11 for full service,
] 91 octane. It was later changed to $3.13.

Got Gas?

] It's time to put up or shut up. Last week I wrote a column
] saying that CBS should have thought twice before showing
] the photos from Abu Ghraib prison. The response from
] readers and even some journalists was like I'd proposed
] banning the printing press. Numerous e-mailers said I'm
] no different than a Holocaust-denier who'd ban photos
] from Auschwitz.
]
] Well, now we have the horrible news that Nick Berg, an
] American contractor, was beheaded by an
] al-Qaeda-affiliated group explicitly in response to the
] release of the Abu Ghraib photos.

There has been an ongoing discussion on MemeStreams for over a year about the ethics of publishing raw war footage. Here is an right wing view. I think it sheds some light on the subject. Be sure to follow the link through to the column he references and read it as well.

Despite rambling off into crypto racist commentary about the literacy rate in Iraq, this article does make a valid observation. Why do we show pictures of prison abuses but we don't show the beheading video? Because the press uses its position to exhert greater pressure on those in power to be responsible then it does on those who are already assumed to be monsters. In general, there is no problem there. The abuse photos have certainly cost us a lot of ground in Iraq, and an arguement can be made that they should have been supressed, but honestly, if our political institutions are as strong as we beleive they are they ought to be able to weather such scrutiny, and communicate effectively about how we're handling it with the Arab public.

The issue at hand is that clearly the press does not make choices about what footage to air and what footage not to air on the basis of the nature of the footage alone. The press makes these decisions on a political basis. While this author's reference to footage of "partial birth abortions" is partisan and oversimplified, the general point must be considered. The press makes political decisions about what to air. In that sense they cannot be seen as objective. Once we've reached that conclusion we must ask what the political motives of the press actually are, and whether we feel like those motives are in line with our interests.

Jonah Goldberg on Abu Ghraib on National Review Online

] If it is forced to withdraw from Iraq, or to so limit
] its operations there as to be effectively withdrawn, the
] entire dynamic that the United States has worked to
] create since the Sept. 11 attacks will reverse itself,
] and the U.S. position in the Muslim world -- which was
] fairly strong in January 2004 -- will deteriorate, and al
] Qaeda's influence will increase dramatically.

I've been waiting for this one. They basically rip the administration on point after point after point. However, they also continue to support the overall concept of the Iraq war. But it only works if we don't loose it.

Stratfor Update

Alan Kay rocks.

To those that are unfamiliar with the blue plane-pink plane concept, the concept may sound like an optics notion.

Fortunately, the idea is simultaneously more interesting, straightforward and yet complex.

The different planes are used as a visual model to describe the two major "planes", or ways of thinking, existent today.

Let us explore the meaning of the pink plane. It represents a more black and white way of portraying the universe. It declares that things are either right or wrong, they work or fail; it applauds discrete knowledge over reasoning and derivation of concepts. It is a plane of thought where math and science are memorized facts and equations.

The blue plane, on the other hand, can be described as perpendicular to the pink plane. The two planes might coincide on a line, where the same rules apply in the physical universe, and hence results can be the same, however the means is completely different. In this plane of thought, visualization of concepts and creativity can be used to accomplish what is accomplished in the pink plane by trite memorization.

It can be therefore shown that most advancement in any field has been accomplished by thought in the blue plane -- thought that in the pink plane would be deemed impossible or ridiculous.

You might agree, or disagree with the previous statements and arguments and ask, so what's the point of it all?

The questions I seek to answer are:

How can we learn to switch our universe into the blue plane? Can we learn to be "bi-planar" and support both schools of thought?

If the children are being instructed in the pink plane, can we teach them to think in the blue plane and live in a pink-plane society?

What is to become of those of us past schooling, who are aware of these planes? Are we to dredge on with pink shades over our blue eyes? What other choice do we have, become hermits and form our own seceded blue colony?

Blue Plane, Pink Plane

Second Clip - "Abuse is different from torture." - Rumsfeld

COMEDY CENTRAL: Daily Show on Abu Ghraib - 2

First Clip - "Oh no, this might make the Arab world angry at us..."

COMEDY CENTRAL: Daily Show on Abu Ghraib - 1

] "We are on the cusp of perfection of extreme evil -- an
] evil whose possibility spreads well beyond weapons of
] mass destruction," Joy warned recently in Wired magazine.

Bill Joy makes the Weekly World News!

Yahoo! Top Stories - Super-Robots Will Wipe Out Mankind!

] Iraq's deepening crisis has left the Bush administration
] with few options, and although the US has entrusted the
] United Nations with the task of finding a way towards
] political stability and elections, officials and analysts
] close to the White House admit that hopes of success are
] receding fast.
]
] Insiders describe a lack of direction and a prevailing
] sense of gloom and desperation in the administration.
] This gloom has only been intensified by the exposure of
] torture and sexual abuse of Iraqi prisoners.

Is the US about to loose control of this completely?

Capitualtion in Iraq?

This is a command line UNIX utility that orders pizza. I'm not kidding.

Pizza Party - Command Line Pizza ordering program