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Friday, Januray 2, 2004
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 Friday, Januray 2, 2004
started 1/2/2004; 9:39:10 AM - last post 1/2/2004; 9:39:10 AM
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Doc Searls - Friday, Januray 2, 2004 
1/2/2004; 1:39:10 PM (reads: 6243, responses: 0)
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Sterling opinions 
| | I don't believe in "War on Terror," but there's definitely a titanic struggle going on. One side, the New World Order side, has a capacity to wage war, so that's what they do, even though that's not one of their best moves. The other side is the New World Disorder, and they're too disordered to throw any real wars, so they commit mayhem on the tribal and individual level. An individual wrapped in a belt-bomb, that's their cruise missile. Their great hope is that War creates more Terror and not less. It certainly worked for them in Chechnya and Afghanistan. The two worlds interpenetrate. They even breed one another. |
| | That puts an interesting spin on a New World Order (a Bush the Elder term, no?) that appears, from its inside perspecive, to be working — at least according to the Wall Street Journal: |
| | The year that began with global controversy over war in Iraq has ended with the capture of Saddam Hussein and the capitulation of Moammar Gadhafi on weapons of mass destruction. While a final judgment on the war won't be possible for years, a fair year-end assessment shows that both the U.S. and the world are better and safer because of it... |
| | Beyond American troops, more and more Iraqis are also now joining the fight for their own country. The Bush Administration's biggest mistake of the war was not trusting the Iraqis early enough with this task, but the Iraqi Civil Defense Corps is now large enough to make a difference. These Iraqis are one reason U.S. forces now have better intelligence against the insurgents. |
| | What about the Middle East, and beyond? The instability that was also widely feared has not appeared, and if anything the opposite is true. No one has been more impressed by the U.S. invasion than the Saudis, who are finally cooperating seriously against al Qaeda. Colonel Gadhafi got the message that playing with WMD is a bad career choice, while Iran is at least meeting with the U.N. again in order to dodge sanctions, or worse, and to preserve its nuclear program. The latter remains a Bush nettle for 2004. |
| | Much as Bernard Lewis predicted, in short, respect for America has only increased with this demonstration of strength and purpose. The invasion and its aftermath have gone far toward purging the ghosts of Beirut and Mogadishu, which Osama bin Laden spun into legends of American weakness. As destructive as they are, the truck bombs in Iraq are only strategically notable because this time they are not driving the U.S. home. Much still depends on the kind of Iraqi government that emerges in 2004 and beyond, but the mere possibility that a democratic Arab and Islamic state might exist is already reshaping the region. |
| | Another global benefit of the war is the end of illusions about the United Nations and a certain kind of "multilateralism." The U.N. couldn't enforce its own resolutions before the war, and afterward it fled Iraq the first time it was targeted by terrorists. The latter was a special insult to the brave U.N. officials who died trying to rebuild Iraq. The lesson of Iraq, as before in Kosovo, is that only the U.S. has the political will and military means to defeat global threats. American Presidents in the future will likewise have to build coalitions on an ad hoc basis, often working around a U.N. Security Council obstructed by France. |
| | The most important Iraq result, however, has been the demonstration of U.S. public support. Even amid the worst of the casualty reports in November, some 60% of Americans said the war was worth fighting. This support is all the more remarkable because it has held despite the loud and relentless opposition of most of the country's liberal elite. |
| | The piece also contains this helpful exchange between Jon and Brian Dear: |
| | Jon: The Internet seems to be transitional at the moment. We're at a point where whole countries and very heavy commercial interests want to tweak the system to fit their biases. Media industries see their control of distribution mechanisms challenged by network-savvy kids building p2p networks faster than the RIAA/MPAA can slam 'em down. What's the future of the relatively dumb network that has served us so well? |
| | Brian: One might argue the "relatively dumb network" stays relatively dumb, but the relatively harmless devices connected to it become more and more evil. "Devices" in the sense of PCs, PDAs, mobile phones, etc. "Harmless" in the sense that historically they've been personal devices that did what you told them to do and didn't do stuff you didn't tell them to do. And "Evil" in the sense that they start doing stuff you haven't given them permission to do, or stuff that prevents you from doing what you want or making your own choices or sharing your private information without permission. |
| | In other words, don't mistake the ends for the means. |
JPBz
| | John Perry Barlow has a blog: BarlowFriendz. Read any post's comments for a Who's Who of blogreading noösphere. |
Retrospectation
| | Blogging is a very American thing, as Dave likes to say. It might not seem so strange to our 19th Century champions of expressive democracy, like Ralph Waldo Emerson and his friend Walt Whitman, for example. |
| | "Whitman¹s ideal of America," writes the poet Carl Dennis, "is a country held together not by law or custom but by a network of imaginative filaments thrown out by autonomous individuals who want to include as many people as they can in their own acts of self-definition." |
| | Read that again, please. It is precisely the bloggers¹ vision. |
| | Ever the true journalist, Chris still uses indented paragraphs, bless him. I like links, so I added the above to his text. |
Uh oh, they're starting to get it
| | It's still framed in terms of competition between bigfeet and littlefeet, even though the market logic is AND, not OR. It's also focused mostly on politics, which is fine. |
| | As usual, Jay Rosen gets the best pull quote: readers are becoming writers. This gets at the most important effect of the Internet on the world's markets: demand gets the power to supply. It revolutionizes everything by allowing grass to become trees, lawns to become forests, each and all to become their own habitats — all in a market ecosystem that subsumes and expands the old top-down, pyramidal few-to-many model. That model flourished in the Industrial Age, and will continue to flourish in the Information Age that follows, and which is only beginning. The difference now is the connected enviornment where where markets flourish. Now "power" in markets involves more than the muscle of big suppliers, distributors and retailers. Those don't go away, but now operate in a connected system with many, many more product originators, distributors, customers and other operators. |
Watch out
| | I've been on the lookout for The Perfect Watch for a long time. What I want are: |
| | - A readable face, preferably black on white
- A second hand
- Markings for minutes/seconds as well as hours
- Light weight
- A comfortable wristband
- Reasonably low cost, since I'll probably lose it
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| | - A little window for the day, or anything else that's hard to set and wrong most of the time anyway
- Any stylistic or functional flourish that defeats the simple purpose of telling time to the second
- A five-pound wristband
- Ugliness
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| | The only watch that's also a weapon — it shoots BBs, dried peas, popcorn kernels, lentils and more up to 8 feet accross the room! This stainless steel watch will be the envy of the classroom or the meeting room. Use it to "wake-up" those sleepy headed co-workers and classmates. When they look around to see who's been pelting them with spitballs, you'll just be casually checking the time. |
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