Wonderful New Yorker Editorial on the likely consequences of the Bush regime’s overweening arrogance

David Remnick has written a deeply perceptive editorial about the need for humility and its total absence in the Bush-Cheney-Rumsfeld camp. He opens with a quote from Dwight Eisenhower’s speech on receiving the Freedom of the City of London:

“Humility must always be the portion of any man who receives acclaim earned in blood of his followers and sacrifices of his friends.

Conceivably a commander may have been professionally superior. He may have given everything of his heart and mind to meet the spiritual and physical needs of his comrades. He may have written a chapter that will glow forever in the pages of military history. Still, even such a man — if he existed — would sadly face the fact that his honors cannot hide in his memories the crosses marking the resting places of the dead. They cannot soothe the anguish of the widow or the orphan whose husband or father will not return….”.

I never realised that Ike could rise to such eloquence. But he was a thoughtful and wise man who had seen — and been responsible for — many of the horrors of warfare. Compare that speech with the strutting, sod-you, sod-the-world hubris of the Bush junta. And tremble for the future. The truth is, I suspect, that the Bush ‘conquest’ of Iraq will turn out to be just like the Israeli ‘conquest’ of the Lebanon — especially when it becomes clear, as an experienced ex-soldier, John Robb, points out, that there is no way to take Baghdad without killing thousands of Iraqi civilians.

More businesses sniff at Open Source software
Register story.

“A report on business attitudes to open source software published this week indicates steady progress in the UK, with a growing number of CIOs seeing OSS as a means to tackle Total Cost of Ownership, and indications that it is being used in more sophisticated roles. The study, conducted by Trend Consulting on behalf of OpenForum Europe and published this week in the IoD’s Director magazine, reveals growing confidence in open source, and notes that avoidance of lock-in is as much a driver as TCO…”

Common sense about digital photography

Top Ten Digital Photography Tips. I thought I’d sussed my digital camera, but found that I hadn’t. Thanks to [[ t e c h n o c u l t u r e ]] for the link.

Nationalism: the Iraqi backbone

More from Scott Rosenberg…

“The cakewalk that some seemed to expect before and immediately after the start of hostilities has now become what surely everyone should have expected it to be — a real war against an enemy that has at least some staying power.

The notion that the Iraqi forces would all just somehow roll over never made much sense. In fact, it seems that there haven’t been nearly the massive defections and surrenders that the U.S. command plainly hoped for and expected. Here’s a little nugget from the Monday Times that I didn’t see much covered elsewhere. Remember that triumphant report a few days ago that the commander of an entire Iraqi division near Basra had surrendered? Michael Gordon reports that, Sunday, “American officials … discovered that the ‘commander’ was actually a junior officer masquerading as a higher-up in an attempt to win better treatment.” It’s stuff like this puts us on warning that every piece of information we are now getting about this war, from any source, is subject to revision and reversal. Reader beware. (Viewer, beware even more.)

Comparisons to the 1991 Gulf War may have lulled Americans into thinking that all campaigns against Iraq can be wrapped up in four days — and Saddam’s army was stronger then. But there’s one absolutely crucial difference: in 1991 we were fighting to oust Saddam’s troops from Kuwait, where they probably understood they should never have been in the first place. This time the Iraqis are fighting for their homeland.

Yes, their homeland is ruled by a brutal dictator, and yes, I don’t doubt that many if not most Iraqis would be happy to see Saddam gone. But there’s a difference between wishing that your government had a better leader and welcoming the influx of hundreds of thousands of heavily armed soldiers from halfway around the world, backed by an air force that is bombing your cities round the clock. This sort of thing tends to bring out the nationalist streak.

I can’t know, from this distance, whether the Iraqis who are fighting back today are doing so solely because Saddam’s secret police have guns to their heads — or because they believe that, on some level, they are fighting for their homes as well as for their president’s hide. It’s certainly still possible that the entire Iraqi command structure could collapse. For the sake of everyone in the field, I hope that happens, the sooner the better. But the longer the Iraqis hold out and the stronger they fight back, the greater must grow our suspicion that U.S. decision-makers were operating from some highly dubious, overconfident assumptions.

You do sometimes have to shake your head and wonder what planet American intelligence is derived from. Gordon writes, “There was no disguising the fact that the attacks [in the south] by the fedayeen” — militia fighters in civilian clothes driving SUVs and toting machine guns and grenade launchers — “were a setback and a surprise.” Surprise? What sand does your head have to be buried in not to anticipate, in 2003, that your massive Western army invading a Muslim Arab country was likely to find itself under assault from such guerrilla forces?”
[Scott Rosenberg’s Links & Comment]

An end to spam — again

John Markoff of the NYT gives a big puff to a new anti-spam company called Mailblocks. It sounds like an intriguing idea, until you read the small print, which the incomparable Dan Gillmor did. He discovered that if you sign up for the Mailblocks service you are also giving them the right to send you, er, spam! Here is the relevant bit of the “Terms of Service”:

“You acknowledge that such Third Party Content is an inseparable part of the Services, and that furnishing such Third Party Content to you cannot be terminated unless the Services are terminated. All such Third Party Content will be understood to be requested by you through your use of the Services….”.

Sigh. It looked like a good idea initially….

UPDATE:Following Dan’s piece, the company changed its policy. Well done Mailblocks. And well done Dan!.

The Bush-Cheney Principle

“The illegal we do immediately; the unconstitutional takes a little longer”.

How to create Amazon reviews — and get the referral fees

blam!: Amazon review creator. Blam! is a clever cgi to automate the creation of Amazon-based reviews for personal blogs. [Way.Nu]

Adam Osborne dies

Adam Osborne has died. He was an early columnist for personal computer magazines, book author and publisher, and founder of Osborne Computer. Dan Bricklin has a remembrance of Osborne including an audio recording. [Source: Scripting News] There is also a NYT obituary by John Markoff.

This takes me back. I had one of the Osborne ‘portable’ computers, and I loved it, even if I wound up with one arm longer than the other from lugging it about. It resembled a cross between a fancy sewing machine and a Korean War army communications console. But it came with Wordstar, the first decent word-processing program I’d ever used, and I wrote hundreds of thousands of words with it. The downside was that its twin disk drives were terribly unreliable, so I was never sure that it wasn’t about to trash my data. As coincidence would have it, one of my colleagues brought in his old Osborne portable yesterday and booted it up. It worked. Ah, those were the days! If you hang on a moment, I’ll tell you about the battle of Omdurman.

This war is different, says Tommy Franks. Yes, but not in the way he thinks

Fine piece in the Guardian by Brian Whitaker, which says, in part:

“Most wars start by accident or with a flourish of misplaced jingoism. But this war is unique. It is hard to recall any conflict in history that aroused so much opposition even before it began. At best its legitimacy and purpose is in serious doubt. At worst, millions regard it as illegal and/or immoral.

Besides that, it is led by a president for whom few outside the United States have any respect. Just as the onus was placed on Iraq, during the period of inspections, to prove that it had no weapons of mass destruction, the onus now is on the invasion forces to convince a sceptical world of their bona fides. This is probably impossible to do, since the official and unofficial aims of the war cannot be reconciled.

One example of confused messages came on the first day with the attempt to assassinate Saddam Hussein. Apart from looking hasty and opportunistic, it conflicted with argument made during the UN inspection process that the main goal was to disarm Iraq. …”.

It’s different in other ways too. For example, US and British politicians are baffled by the fact that the ‘unity effect’ is less powerful than hitherto. Up to now, when troops were finally committed, the polulation tended to rally behind them. But that isn’t happening to anything like the same extent just now. Why? In an interesting article (also in today Guardian, Peter Preston argues that it’s partly because it’s been sold as a high-tech, low-collateral-damage war waged by machines. And people won’t rally behind machines.

A real, live Iraqi Blog? Or a clever spoof?

See for yourself.