Saturday, 18 January

ENCHAINEE UPDATE: Noted today on Joi Ito's weblog is the contention that China was blocking Blogspot because of one site called DynaWeb on which they found material they considered objectionable. There are about a million users of Blogspot registered.

Saturday, 18 January

THE KHALAYLEH CONNECTION: In an article in Front Page Magazine Online, Ansar Al-Islam: Iraq's Al-Qaeda Connection, writer Jonathan Schanzer describes more of what has been reported to be going on in the northern area of Iraq:

Today, Ansar operates in fortified mountain positions along the Iran-Iraq border known as "Little Tora Bora" (after the Taliban stronghold in Afghanistan).



In December, Jordan's prime minister announced that al-Qaeda operative Fazel Inzal al-Khalayleh (a.k.a. Abu Mussab al-Zarqawi) had sought refuge with Ansar. Khalayleh had ordered the spring 2002 attack on Salih as well as the October 2002 murder of U.S. Agency for International Development officer Laurence Foley in Amman.

Saturday, 18 January

CHEMICAL ALI: Human Rights Watch is calling for the arrest of Gen. Ali Hassan al-Majid on charges of genocide and crimes against humanity. The general who is currently acting as the envoy of President Saddam Hussein of Iraq and on a tour of Arab capitals is Saddam's cousin and confident.

HRW said that Al-Majid should be prosecuted for directing a campaign in northern Iraq in the 1980's that involved the use of chemical weapons.

In the most publicized incident, 5,000 men, women and children were killed in Halabja in March, 1988, when Iraqi government forces bombed and shelled the town with cyanide gas.

Chemical Ali is described as Saddam Hussein's hatchet man.

Saturday, 18 January

IS THERE AN AUNTIFADA IN YOUR FUTURE? BBC enters into 'news-gathering exchange' with Al-Jazeera. How long, the UK Telegraph wonders, before this unusual union spawns an Auntifada?

CHINA - BLOGSPOT ENCHAINEE: I received an e-mail from John Ray that China has stopped blocking Blogspot. This may not be accurate. It was determined that the blockage was via the IP, so Jason Shellen changed the IP. This is a short-term and stop-gap solution. Jason can continue to do fancy footwork evading the Chinese censor, but eventually the censor, if he wants to, can catch up with with this dance-around. As Jason hops around from IP to IP, the censor will hop around after him. But this approach is working pragmatically. And it buys some time to afford a resolution while minimizing the Chinese-based bloggers suffering.

Then it came to my attention that the official Chinese government agency which is supposed to be in charge of these matters has denied that they blocked Blogspot.

Oddly enough, this could well be true. In order to understand how it could be true, you need to understand the usual structure of the modern totalitarian state.

This genre of society involves a duel-entity state. The first entity is the official government. The second entity is the Shadow State. The latter is the ruling cadre which is The Party. Regardless of the label, left or right, the packaging is just a veneer. And under the veneer are the control freaks. In the communist version the organ engaged in this activity would be called something like this: The Communist Party's People's Committee for Guarding Against Counter-Revolutionary Activities. Well, you get the idea. Thus, even though the official government agency or organ may not be blocking Blogspot, it is still possible that Blogspot may be blocked by an organ of the Shadow State. A People's Committee of Something or Other somewhere. Naturally, they are not going to give us an index of all the People's Committees, which is probably classified top-secret. And that's just one of the problems in this affair. There is another problem that should be addressed right about here.

The censorship of a totalitarian state can have secondary effects. When people are frightened and intimidated, they become self-censoring because they wish to protect their safety and that of their families. It is cogent, I believe, for those currently trying to tinker with this situation to understand these additional dimensions in order to be able to proceed more effectively.

The 'geek vector' for much of the communications that revolve around this situation may be found at Go.Openflows. Go is an old Chinese board game. There is a small photo of it on the upper left of the website. Since the website looks almost like an old-fashioned switchboard, maybe it's based on a web spider or a wiki. But I am not an advanced geek, so I don't know beans about that kind of stuff. If you want to know more about this issue, this website would be a good place to start.

For a list of Chinese weblogs to peruse, Sino-splice would be a good source. These weblogs are almost all in English. They are written by indigenous Chinese or expatriates living in China.

Ah, for the old days (before 9/11) when the Federal Government's 'alphabet agencies' did all this stuff for us. But not anymore! The 'alphabet agencies' are too busy now monitoring the Qaeda Gang. So it looks like China has become a bit of a do-it-yourself project. Well, we've got the geeks, if they've got the time to waste. And I think our geeks are better than their geeks.

Friday, 17 January

AL QAEDA'S FINGERPRINTS: Two al Qaeda suspects were taken into custody as they tried to enter the United States after their fingerprints were matched with ones lifted by U.S. military officials from documents found in caves in Afghanistan, law-enforcement authorities said yesterday. [snip] American soldiers, assisted by federal law-enforcement authorities, lifted what was described at the time as 'a great number' of latent fingerprints from papers found in the caves, and others seized in abandoned hideouts and training camps for al Qaeda and Taliban members. The prints were added to the National Security System for screening incoming aliens. Nabbed by Cave Prints from the Washington Times by Jerry Seper.

Tuesday, 14 January

MILITARY-TAINMENT? According to Danny Schechter, a sports executive will be in charge of the coverage of the prospective Iraq Campaign on CNN. From EM-BED US PUH-LEASE:

As war becomes more like a sporting event, or 'millitainment' to use a phrase coined by Isaacson's old buddies at TIME, he will be replaced by a sports guy, Jim Walton, formerly the chief of the company's CNN Sports Illustrated cable channel.

I don't get cable TV so I don't see CNN. It's difficult to ascertain what the implications of this would be. Despite the seemingly cynical or snide tone Danny has adopted on this item, it is not necessarily a bad thing. It could mean better graphic presentation of complex issues that would help clarify the situation for viewers trying to follow the events. The former head of ABC News who recently died came out of the Sports Division, I believe. It does not necessarily mean that the media considers military engagements as entertainment or a form of spectator sports. It may be more a matter of his approach to presenting the information to the viewers. But, I grant you, it would be easy to give a silly interpretation of this.

Tuesday, 14 January

TOURIA TIOULI COURT DATE: A hearing in the Dubai court is set for January 19, Nathalie Clarissoux told AFP. Tiouli has been under house arrest at her hotel at her own expense.

Monday, 13 January

THAT PARROT IS ONLY SLEEPING: The discovery of a poison factory in London last week has intensified concern that Britain is unwittingly training a generation of so-called 'kitchen sink terrorists.'

'There are thousands of scientists in this country and we don't have the foggiest idea what the majority are doing here or who they are,' Andrew Mackinlay, UK Labour MP and member of the Foreign Affairs Committe said.

Rihab Taha, head of the Iraqi biological weapons program, also known as 'Dr. Germ,' studied plant diseases at the University of East Anglia.

Excerpts from an article by Francis Elliott appearing in the Gulf News.

Sunday, 12 January

TOURIA TIOULI UPDATE: I surfed over to Liberation, the French newspaper, and read an article about Ms. Tiouli via Google's translation since my French is pretty fractured by now. In the tradition of their engagement, I suppose, at the end of the article they give an e-mail address for Ms. Tiouli's support contact: *roddeschmittbATaolDOTcom*. It's important to keep the channels of communication open and flowing.

HAJ WORRIES: The coincidence of US war preparations against Iraq with the annual Muslim pilgrimage, which is expected to draw more than two million to Makkah next month, could prove explosive for Saudi Arabia, analysts warn.

'Palestine pilgrims will start arriving on January 16,' Mustaf Hashim Dieb in Riyadh said. But Saleh Fareed reports from Jeddah that Israel is 'creating hurdles for Haj pilgrams.' (Oh, yeah, that's just what Saudi Arabia needs right now-- a bunch of soccer maniacs running around.)

NORTHERN IRAQ BADLANDS: Northern Iraq is beginning to sound like the Northwest Frontier area of Pakistan around the notorious Khyber Pass-- a lawless area where anything is possible. And the operative word here would be 'control,' as in: the area is increasingly, it seems, out of control. In this latest dispatch from the UK Telegraph, Chemical war threat by Iraq's 'Taliban', it appears that there is even more trouble brewing in Iraq besides Blix's Picks.