] This site is a coalition effort of bloodthirsty hawks and
] ineffectual doves united in admiration for Mohammed Saeed
] al-Sahaf, Iraqi Minister of Information (currently on
] administrative leave).

Wasn't sure whether to put this in the humor or current events topic ;)

We Love the Iraqi (Mis)Information Minister

From the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute. Transfers of major conventional weapons to Iraq, listed by item and country exporting. The PDF file has dates of 1973-2002, but in actuality is only really current through 1990, since there were arms embargos in place after that date, so no transfers were reported.

Iraq arms trade, SIPRI data, 1973-1990

crankymessiah wrote:
] ] The minister also said that coalition forces were
] ] throwing booby traps in the form of pens and pencils into
] ] Iraqi villages and townships.
] ]
] ] "The authority of the civil defense ... issued a warning
] ] to the civilian population not to pick up any of those
] ] pencils because they are booby traps," he said, adding
] ] that the British and American forces were "immoral
] ] mercenaries" and "war criminals" for such behavior.
] ]
] ] "I am not talking about the American people and the
] ] British people," he said. "I am talking about those
] ] mercenaries. ... They have started throwing those
] ] pencils, but they are not pencils, they are booby traps
] ] to kill the children."
]
] I didn't quote the main parts of this article. I just wanted
] to quote this to see if anyone else thinks this is the most
] insanely bizarre bit of propoganda yet.

That one goes up near the top of the list! As well as the accusation that our jets are flying low in a deliberate attempt to cause cracks in the holy tombs inside of the mosques?? I haven't decided yet if that's just complete schizophrenia, deliberate propaganda, or if there's an Edgar Allen Poe "Telltale Heart" aspect to it... Like maybe something is hidden in those tombs that they're worried will be found?

Iraqi official: U.S. lying about progress

] Concentrate on the symbol and when you have it clearly
] in your mind click on the crystal ball and it will show
] you the symbol you are thinking of . . .

Yes, I know it's April 1st. No, nothing's going to scream and jump out at you on this page. But it is a neat numbers trick which seemed an appropriate link to meme today. :)

The Flash Mind Reader

Hijexx wrote:
] The footage was the most disturbing thing on television in
] some time. There was US President George W Bush, being prepped
] for his televised declaration of war. It was not the combing
] of his hair, the only aspect of the coverage reported by any
] American media outlet (the Washington Post in this case),
] which was cause for embarrassment; everyone expects that.
] Rather, it was the demeanour — I would say antics — of the
] president himself.
]
] Like some class clown trying to get attention from the back of
] the room, he started mugging for his handlers. His eyes darted
] back and forth impishly as he cracked faces at others around
] him. He pumped a fist and self-consciously muttered, "feel
] good," which was interestingly sanitised into the more mature
] and assertive, "I'm feeling good" by the same Washington Post.
]
] He was goofing around, and there's only one way to interpret
] that kind of behaviour just seconds before announcing war on
] Iraq: the man is an idiot.
]
] ...
]
] I've seen the footage they're talking about. It's not the
] hair combing, it's the antics. I watched as he sat there
] trying to practice his serious face and asking if it was good
] or not. It was pretty sickening.

The Washington Post article is here, btw:
 http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A1027-2003Mar20.html

Now, I haven't seen the footage itself (if anyone has a link to it, let me know), but I would like to offer an alternative view, especially because I've been doing a lot of public speaking myself lately.

Basically, it's *scary* to get up on stage. Even when I'm giving a talk that I've given literally dozens of times before, I get nervous right before I speak. My palms sweat, I fidget, I run through the script in my head, I worry about how the audience is going to receive what I say, I worry whether I'll communicate the emotional impact that I intend to communicate, and I do all kinds of absurd little things to try and calm myself down and/or psych myself up. Then, once I'm actually on stage, I usually go on autopilot and I'm fine, though I may not even be consciously aware sometimes that I'm speaking. Indeed, on a couple very stressful occasions where I was speaking to enormous audiences, I'd have people coming up to me after a talk and telling me what a great job I did, and how moved they were by some of what I'd said, but I would have absolutely no memory of some of the parts of the talk that I'd just given, because I was so nervous while I was speaking!

When I watch Bush speak (and also sometimes when I watch Colin Powell or Tony Blair speak), perhaps because I'm identifying so strongly with the *process* of public speaking, I can picture what's going on behind the scenes. Like during Bush's "State of the Union" speech, while I was... [ Read More (0.3k in body) ]

George's little antics

(from the original essay):

] So who are these celebrities? What is their education? What is
] their experience in affairs of State or in National Security?
] While I will defend to the death their right to express their
] opinions, I think that if they are going to call into question
] the intelligence of our leaders, we should also have all the
] facts on their educations and background . . .

There's a post making the rounds about comparing the educational backgrounds of actors and government officials. I was curious as to how much of it was urban legend and how much was true, and was pleased to see that Snopes had already beaten me to it and posted an analysis of the piece a few days ago. Summary: The essay wasn't 100% accurate, but does seem to have been pretty close to the mark, on at least a factual basis.

(4/23/2003 note: Adjusted URL since the page moved)

Urban Legends Analysis: (Who's Smarter? Actors or Government Officials?)

] The bombing of Iraq was intensified after American
] officials revealed that their special forces had been
] holding face-to-face negotiations with Republican Guard
] leaders. The awesome display of firepower was designed as
] much to increase the pressure on them to surrender as to
] destroy targets crucial to Saddam.
. . .
] Mr Rumsfeld had earlier given clues about the extent
] of the unseen war being waged for the loyalty of Iraqi
] generals. "There are communications in every conceivable
] mode and method, public and private, to the Iraqi forces,
] that they can act with honour and turn over their weapons
] and walk away from them, and they will not be hurt," he said.

I fully agree with this. We don't *have* to fight. It's not about killing people and destroying cities. It's about changing the Iraqi leadership. So the quicker we can get through this, with the fewest possible casualties (on *both* sides), the better.

Times Online: The Other Unseen Part of the War

] Keynote Systems, which regularly tests the response times
] of busy websites, said the responsiveness of BBC News
] Online suffered during the busy lunchtime period with
] average download times rising from 0.47 seconds to 1.88
] seconds.
]
] ITV News went through a more serious slowdown with
] average download times ballooning from 5.66 seconds to
] 15.84 seconds.
]
] As the conflict got under way, some sites such as that
] run by Arabic satellite TV broadcaster Al Jazeera were
] only intermittently available.
]
] The website of Britain's The Sun newspaper was also
] taking a long time to finish loading.
]
] Nic Newman, head of editorial development and technology
] at BBC News Online, said traffic to the site had already
] almost tripled and he expected it to grow further.
]
] Similar leaps in visitor numbers have been seen at the
] Yahoo and MSNBC news sites.
]
] According to Comscore Media Metrix, the top 15 news sites
] have seen traffic jump by more than 40%.

MemeStreams has been experiencing a steady increase in traffic since the 17th. We are currently up 166% [typo correction: 66%] for the period of the 17th thru 20th, vs 13th thru 16th. This is a mildly misleading statistic, as Saturday and Sunday are usually not very busy days. But no matter which way you slice it, we are experiencing a significant traffic increase. I'll post an update on this after I can compare a complete week.

I'd also be interested to know how much of that increase in traffic is from new users, vs. the existing users doing more hits than usual? For example, is it possible to tell how many unique visitors check out Memestreams on an average day?

Also of interest, "baghdad webcam" has very quickly become the top search term hitting the site, accounting for 5% of all search engine hits, and flying right past other "hot" search terms such as "ebonics translator", "isonews", and the everlasting "raver porn".

A quick visit to MSN's search engine shows that we are the top link for "baghdad webcam"..

Hee! I'm glad I tracked that link down via Mr. Kobeissi and MEMRI.

Good for us, bad for MSN users, as the page linked currently has absolutely nothing about webcams, let alone webcams in Iraq. The next link MSN search brings up is www.webcaminiraq.org, which was the link origionally on that page which caused MSN to index us as the top hit for that search term.. [shrug] I guess MSN's search engine isn't that smart. Or maybe it is, in a completely accidental way.. It is sending users to our "Current Events" top links page after all... :)

Perhaps we could add a blurb to the top of the "topics" page that says something like, "Note: This page changes on a daily basis. If you were directed here by a particular search engine, the article that you were searching for may have already scrolled off, but you can find it again by typing the same search term into the 'Search Memestreams' box in the lefthand column."

Thanks to Rattle for the status report!

BBC NEWS | Technology | Iraq conflict hits websites hard

] The United States is in a war with al Qaeda. The war
] began on Sept. 11, 2001. It will conclude when the
] ability of al Qaeda or related or follow-on forces,
] to attack the United States has been sufficiently
] diminished that the United States has returned to a
] state of relative security -- relative, since absolute
] security does not exist in this world. The Iraq
] campaign is not that war. It is a campaign within that
] war. It follows a previous campaign -- Afghanistan --
] and it will be followed by other campaigns.

Interesting speculation. I don't agree with all of his assumptions, especially involving the intent or relative support of some other countries such as Pakistan and Saudi Arabia, but he does present some interesting thoughts about ways in which the geopolitical landscape will be changing over the next year, along with some of the forces - both predictable and unpredictable -- which may cause those changes.

[IP] Stratfor Weekly: Beyond the Iraq Campaign

] Wikipedia is a multilingual project to create a complete
] and accurate open content encyclopedia. We started on
] January 15, 2001 and are already working on 110789
] articles in the English version. Visit the help page and
] experiment in the sandbox to learn how you can edit any
] article right now.

Amazing and extensively-hyperlinked informational resource available in a dozen languages.

I ran across a few of its pages while searching for information on Iraq's history, and found not only that, but also what's effectively "current events" information, current as of a few hours ago.

One of the things that I *really* like about Wiki -- if you see an error or omission on a page, you can go in and change it yourself! Just click on the "Edit this page" link at the bottom of any article. Or click on "Recent Changes" to see when other changes were made, who made them (by name or IP), or what previous versions of articles said.

The pages are a bit slow to load at times, but the quantity of information makes it worth it.

Wikipedia