TOM FRIEDMAN WRITES:

Many Iraqis today express real resentment for the other Arab regimes, and even toward the Palestinians, for how they let themselves be bought off by Saddam. They feel that Saddam used the Iraqi people’s oil wealth to buy popularity for himself in the Arab street — by giving Palestinians and other Arab students scholarships and nice apartments in Baghdad, and by paying off all sorts of Arab nationalist writers and newspapers. And then these same Arab intellectuals and media gave Saddam a free pass to torture, repress and starve his own people. In other words, “Arabism,” in the minds of many Iraqis, is the cloak that Saddam hid behind to imprison them for 35 years, and now that they can say that out loud, they are saying it.

You’d never know this from watching Arab satellite television like Al Jazeera. Because although these stations have 21st-century graphics, they’re still dominated by 1950’s Nasserite political correctness — which insists that dignity comes from how you resist the foreigner, even if he’s come as a liberator, not by what you build yourself.

But the truth will come out. . . .

Indeed.

BLOG PHOTOJOURNALISM: John Daley sends this:

If you’re interested, here are some blog entries posted from Bryant Park (using a verizon hotspot, not the park’s) during the blackout. There are also photos.

Link 1

Link 2

Link 3

Very cool stuff. Somebody tell Mark Glaser!

UPDATE: Here’s another firsthand report, from Chris Sciabarra, who’s guest-posting at Arthur Silber’s blog.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Brendan Loy has more cool photos. And here’s a link to blog video of the lights coming on in Chelsea.

MORE BBC DEVELOPMENTS:

The reputation of BBC journalism, already under the spotlight at the Hutton Inquiry, faces another test after one of its senior correspondents announced he was taking legal action against an American magazine.

Tom Mangold said he was “issuing legal proceedings” against Newsweek after it alleged that his exclusive report on tthe arrest of a British-Indian businessman for attempting to sell missiles to Islamic terrorists had “blown” a major intelligence operation.

Hmm. This strikes me as ill-advised. Bill Adams has more thoughts on the subject.

TYLER COWEN HAS A ROUNDUP OF LINKS on economics and electricity regulation, and responds to Robert Kuttner’s predictable call for more regulation:

Kuttner argues that the vertically integrated, regulated monopolist (“Con Ed”) model is better. I would like to see an empirical comparison of blackout rates (does anyone know of one?), but of course we had serious blackouts before deregulation. Besides, it is probably too late to go back to consolidation, and this model was dismal on the innovation front.

Meanwhile Sparkey has a roundup of technical information and links. Don’t miss it. And, if that’s not enough to worry about, here’s a post from Alex Knapp on the looming shortage of drinkable water. (Not here in the East Tennessee Rain Forest, Alex!) (Via Winds of Change, which also has an excellent blackout linkfest.)

UPDATE: And Virginia Postrel brings a good firsthand report, which includes this gem:

On Thursday afternoon when the computers popped off and the lights dimmed — brownout! — I said: No prob, I’ll walk home. Then I said: Wait a minute, what‚ll I do when I get there? I live on the 68th floor. Think I’ll stay at the office.

Indeed.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Steve Verdon has multiple posts on electricity regulation and deregulation.

“THE REAL QUESTION is not why we had an urban blackout, but why we didn’t have one sooner.”

TOM MAGUIRE POSTS on heat waves, French government incompetence, and gloating.

IF YOU WANT TO BE GOVERNOR OF CALIFORNIA, Tacitus advises, it’s best to renounce your past connections to fascist hatemongers.

UPDATE: Ed Driscoll: “those crickets on the set of the Today Show are still chirping.”

WHITE HOUSE DROPPED BALL: This White House press release seems a bit confused about the role of the federal judiciary:

President George W. Bush today announced his intention to nominate one individual to serve in his administration:

The President intends to nominate Peter Sheridan, of New Jersey, to be United States District Court Judge for the District of New Jersey.

“In his administration?” I’m sure someone just cut-and-pasted the wrong language, but it’s a bit embarrassing — and sure to confirm his critics’ worst fears! (Thanks to reader Ben Finkelstein for the link).

NICK GILLESPIE WRITES on why things didn’t go wrong:

Indeed, the most interesting blackout-related story is the one that never happened. The sort of pandemonium, hysteria, looting, crime, and chaos that typically greets even minor football victories as well as catastrophic utility failures simply didn’t materialize. This was true even in New York City, where such antisocial behavior was once seen as part of the city’s very essence. Indeed, the iconic ’70s Manhattan-based sitcom Escape from New York was titled that way for a reason—one that no longer makes sense.

(Note to Gillespie: two “Indeeds” in one paragraph? You’ll be hearing from my trademark lawyers, as soon as they take a break from the work for Fox. . . .)

Really, though, as Kathleen Tierney has noted, the panic-and-chaos reaction is the exception, though the media tend to treat it as the rule. (More on that here.) But the media tend always to paint ordinary people as, well, worse than they really are. Why is that?

UPDATE: Reader Mark Tough explains something else confusing:

The John Carpenter film, Escape from New York, is neither a sitcom, nor a (direct) product of the 70s, having been made in 1981.

Cruising over to Reason, the quote looked the same until I checked the source HTML, where the problem becomes clear. Nick’s original text actually reads:
“Indeed, the iconic ’70s Manhattan-based sitcom The Odd Couple even featured a Boy Scout punching one of the characters, among other signs of defining Big Apple vitriol. The 1981 cult classic Escape from New York was titled that way for a reason — one that no longer makes sense.”

Better?

Indeed.

It is better. But sorry, Mark, you’ll still be hearing from my lawyers. Gotta protect that trademark. . . .

UPDATE: John Podhoretz is crediting Rudy Giuliani. Does Rudy’s influence reach to Cleveland and Detroit?

FISHING FOR BAD QUOTES ON THE ECONOMY? A reader forwards this email from the New York Times:

The New York Times is working on an article about the rising cost of higher education, and the simultaneous reduction of academic programs on some campuses. They want to know how this is affecting members of NSCS.

Is it going to take longer for you to graduate than you hoped? Are you taking out more loans than you expected? Working more? Partying less? Taking a forced break from school?

To share your story, please contact Greg Winter at the New York Times as soon as possible, with your name and chapter, by phone or email.

“Working more, partying less?” The horror.

HERE’S A BLOG ENTRY, purportedly from Iraq. No reason to doubt it, but I don’t know the blogger.

“UNFAIR, UNBALANCED, AND AFRAID:” Josh Chafetz of OxBlog has the cover story in the latest Weekly Standard. It’s about the ongoing unravelling of the BBC:

The testimony so far has not been flattering to the BBC (or the government). Charges and countercharges of corruption fill the front pages of the papers. (Had TV cameras been allowed into the Royal Courts of Justice, where the witnesses are testifying, the BBC might have unwittingly produced and starred in a hugely popular reality TV show.) It turns out that what a captive audience gets from a media megalith with a government-enforced subsidy is exactly what a beginning student of economics would predict: The BBC may be arrogant, but it’s also incompetent, not to mention surly and evasive when criticized.

It’s a short road from the BBC to the DMV.

UPDATE: This post has led one reader to email in defense of the DMV.

WE KEEP HEARING about those Iraqi tips on dealing with blackouts. Now John Cole has some West Virginia tips for Iraqis:

1.) Quit sabotaging your god damn power transmission sites.

2.) Quit looting your damn country.

3.) Quit shooting your AK in the air out of anger, sadness, joy, jubilation.

4.) Quit shooting your AK at coalition troops and provisional Iraqi police.

Silliness, I tell you. I shall also note, when the power went out, no one went to their local Shi’a Cleric to demand protests and burnings of the American flag. They dealt with it, and tried to be part of the solution.

Yes, that is a difference.

Meanwhile C.D. Harris says this never would have happened if people had just listened to Dick Cheney. Cheney? What does he know about energy?

WORTH REMEMBERING:

The number of East Germans killed as they attempted to seek freedom in the West was above 1,000, researchers said yesterday as they released updated figures.

A society established to remember the victims of the Berlin Wall said it had uncovered the identity of a further 23 people, including a pregnant woman, who died.

The workers’ paradise. Of course, some vestiges remain:

The reigning Miss Vietnam, who was preparing to study at Luton University, has been kidnapped, allegedly by the son of a senior police officer upset at her desire to leave her communist homeland.

Is that pathetic, or what?

POWER HAS BEEN FULLY RESTORED in New York City.

RAND SIMBERG HAS A GOOD COLUMN on the X-Prize and suborbital flight over at TechCentralStation.

GORELICK UPDATE: Beldar’s Blog has been defending Jamie Gorelick, and there’s been a lot of back and forth. There are quite a few posts, but this one seems to link back to most of the others. You may also want to follow this technorati link, which references the original post by Dwight Meredith. Weirdly, though, it doesn’t include my post linking Dwight’s, meaning that I can’t promise that it’s not leaving something else out. Here’s the technorati cosmos for that post, but it doesn’t pick up on Beldar’s reference to it. Apparently, technorati is less comprehensive than I had thought. That’s not a criticism — after all, it’s free — but it’s worth remembering.

HERE’S AN EMAIL FROM BASRA that’s worth reading.

MESSAGE TO FRANK J.: Resistance is futile. You were warned.

UPDATE: Heh. Some people are just too good with Photoshop.

HERE’S A PHONED-IN BLOG ENTRY from powerless Oak Park, MI, dictated over the phone by Moe Freedman. Backup power for gas stations turns out to be important.

UPDATE: Reader Mike Doffing emails:

The biggest problem with having a generator around is not the generator itself but the hassle of storing dangerous (and slowly degrading) gasoline. Gas stations presumably don’t have that problem. How about the Bush administration announcing a plan to give a nice tax break to all stations who buy a generator. To make sure they keep it and not sell it, how about having the county inspectors who check the pumps for dispensing accuracy check on the generators as well. They can also check to make sure they have a hand siphon to solve the catch-22 problem of getting the initial gas to power the generator. There are a lot of registered voters sitting in those three hour gas lines.

Good point. Me, I want one of those tripower generators — natural gas, propane, or gasoline, whatever’s handy. . . .

RICH HAILEY HAS A LONG and rather good post on power systems and blackouts.

JUST GOT BACK from a visit to a former student’s startup video-game company. I played a beta version of the game, Hostile Intent. I wiped out a bunch of international terrorists who were holding a Chechen leader hostage, blocking a peace agreement with Russia. The game lets you do cool things like blow holes in the walls of buildings with C-4 or rocket launchers, which most games don’t. Here’s a video story about it. Pretty cool stuff.

I’ll be writing a bit more on this later. I’ve been meaning to pay more attention to the game world, which no doubt has more actual influence on the world than weblogs do.

ALGERIAN TOURIST UPDATE:

Algerian security forces and two helicopters have been seen near the border with Mali where 14 Europeans are being held hostage, sources told AFP in the Kidal region.

“I have seen dozens of armed Algerian soldiers, and two Algerian military helicopters near the border with Mali,” said an official who returned from the area.

Another source also confirmed the presence of Algerian troops and two helicopters in the Algerian town of Bordj Mokhtar, about 10 kilometers (six miles) from Mali.

I guess somebody thinks the negotations aren’t certain to pan out.

DANIEL DREZNER REPORTS THAT IT’S NOT JUST THE BBC: The foreign press in general seems hell-bent to make things sound chaotic.

COPYCAT SNIPER ATTACKS? Sheesh.