Battleangel

Or free speech and common sense vs. US institutions. It seems that YellowTimes has been suspended for posting snapshots from the AlJazeera clip of American POWs held by Iraqi forces. Ah, this is sickening. The ISP claims that it was “adult content” .. yeah right. This is sure to create a ripple since many of the more critical news sites (like Michael Moore, and myself for that matter) link YellowTimes. Oh boy, will this backfire or what … Swedish media for example broadcasted the video clip as soon as they got permission from AlJazeera. I am proud that common sense still prevails somewhere in the world. And as I pointed out yesterday, the US violated the much talked about (but little understood) Geneva Convention first and this forfeited their right to bitch once the Iraqis countered.

For more serious news on the war then you would expect from regular media, I would certainly recommend WarBlogs.cc and Warblogging.com.

It is interesting that once again, blogging prevails over regular media channels. It does a much better job at reporting facts and separating them from fiction. And it maintains a certain kind of consistency. Plus, there is no need for political correctness. And no sensational journalism to sell newspapers or whatever.
Bloggers say what they like because they don’t have a publisher breathing down their necks. Nor do they have any links to political parties or ideologies but rather express common sense in a way that is very refreshing these days. It’s no wonder that regular media is so sceptical. And that the american society tries to shut them down as often as they can (as just happened with YellowTimes).

As reported by Warblogging.com, the entire situation gets worse by the day. And not only in Iraq where Apaches are dropping like flies (because they are wrongfully deployed against targets that they aren’t designed to handle). I AM NOT IMPRESSED. At a minimum I expected the greatest military power of the world to be able to handle their own equipment. On the other hand this is really a political conflict and their are indications that many of the decisions on the battlefield are made on a political basis. One point that could be made here is that the decision to go to war and how a war should be fought should be up to security analysts and certain high-ranking officers.

The saying “Ne sutor supra crepidam” comes to mind here. As the story goes, the Greek painter Apelles was confronted by a shoemaker. He reportedly criticized a pair of sandals in one of Apelles’ paintings (yeah, a real nit-picker, like myself) and then began to criticize the remainder of the work. Apelles responded, “Shoemaker, no higher than the sandals”. The point is clear. Do not meddle with things that you don’t understand. And not only because things could get out of hand but also since there are people who have trained their entire lives to complete a certain task in society. This is however a prevailing problem with all the democracies of the world. Everyone wants a saying .. and ironically, in the information economy it has become very “hip” to be (or at least appear to be) all-knowing. In reality, their guesses are no better than mine. Let the painter paint goddamnit!

(Trivia: This quotation or proverb is also known as “Ne supra crepidam sutor judicaret” (”Let not a shoemaker judge above his shoe”) but has also been translated to “A cobbler should not judge above his last” or “Shoemaker stick to your last.”)

The situation within the US is also in a downward spiral. The siege here is more of the mental kind though. FBI, for example, has long since started issuing “national security letters” that “require businesses to turn over electronic records about finances, telephone calls, e-mail and other personal information, according to officials and documents” . Wiretaps and violations of civil rights are UP this year .. common sense is going DOWN. As Warblogging also notes, this is as “un-american” as it could possibly get.
One would have hoped that people learned something from the days of communist witch-hunts. And aggressions against foreign powers. But oh no, history just has to repeat itself. No real surprise here but this is neverthless bad news for the future. Fear breeds fear and soon aggression becomes a goal in itself.