HERE’S A PRO-HOWARD DEAN BLOG from Memphis. Dean’s campaign, as has been noted earlier, is relying heavily on horizontal communication: blogs, Meetup.com, etc. It will be interesting to see how it works.

GOOD NEWS:

PESHAWAR, Pakistan, June 5 — Up to 40 Taliban guerrillas and seven Afghan government soldiers have been killed in the Taliban’s worst defeat since it was driven from power by an American-led coalition in 2001, officials said today.

The big news is that they were killed by Afghan soldiers. Keep it up.

CUBAN PRISON HELLHOLES: First there’s this one:

HAVANA – Dissident journalist Manuel Vazquez Portal tells of rats, bad food and a tiny cell in a diary smuggled out of prison by his wife, providing a rare look at life behind bars in Cuba.

Vazquez described his cell’s furnishings as a rickety cot, a dirty mattress without sheets and pillow, a fetid toilet bowl. Rats scurry across the floor and water drips down the walls, he wrote.

“The cell is a space of 1 1/2 meters wide by 3 meters long (about 5 feet by 10 feet),” Vazquez wrote in one entry. “A barred door partially covered by a plate of steel. A barred window, through which enters the sun’s rays, the rain, the insects.”

Then there’s this one:

Is America the only country in the world that could run a prison camp where prisoners gain weight? Between April 2002 and March 2003, the Joint Task Force returned to Afghanistan 19 of the approximately 664 men (from 42 countries) who have been held in the detention camps at the U.S. Naval Base in Guantanamo Bay. Upon leaving, it has been reported, each man received two parting gifts: a brand new copy of the Koran as well as a new pair of jeans. Not the act of generosity that it might first appear, the jeans, at least, turned out to be a necessity. During their 14-month stay, the detainees (nearly all of them) had each gained an average of 13 pounds.

Guess which one the international human rights folks have made the bigger stink about. Plus, the story on Castro’s prison has the “perspective” paragraph comparing its conditions to other prisons in Latin America; coverage of Guantanamo doesn’t do that.

THE GUARDIAN now has a correction on its main page regarding the Wolfowitz oil story:

A report which was posted on our website on June 4 under the heading “Wolfowitz: Iraq war was about oil” misconstrued remarks made by the US deputy defence secretary, Paul Wolfowitz, making it appear that he had said that oil was the main reason for going to war in Iraq. He did not say that. He said, according to the department of defence website, “The … difference between North Korea and Iraq is that we had virtually no economic options with Iraq because the country floats on a sea of oil. In the case of North Korea, the country is teetering on the edge of economic collapse and that I believe is a major point of leverage whereas the military picture with North Korea is very different from that with Iraq.” The sense was clearly that the US had no economic options by means of which to achieve its objectives, not that the economic value of the oil motivated the war. The report appeared only on the website and has now been removed.

Advantage: Blogosphere.

UPDATE: Best of the Web notes: “Still, cheers to the Guardian for correcting its mistakes, something a certain New York Times columnist has yet to do.”

HOWELL RAINES AND GERALD BOYD HAVE RESIGNED from the New York Times. Joseph Lelyveld will take over on an interim basis.

UPDATE: I wonder if this had anything to do with it? Probably not. Meanwhile Roger Simon says that there will probably be more journalistic scandals.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Noemie Emery says the Times’ problem isn’t diversity, but dynasty.

YET ANOTHER UPDATE: Here’s the Times story on Raines’ and Boyd’s resignations.

MORE: Howard Veit says it’s a revolution in journalism.

STILL MORE: Matt Welch and Arthur Silber have noticed some funny things about the New York Times press release on the subject.

BAD NEWS AND GOOD NEWS FOR THE GUARDIAN:

First, the bad news: It’s retracted and apologized for a story that cast doubts on whether Jack Straw and Colin Powell believed there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. And now, the story — widely debunked in the Blogosphere — that Wolfowitz said the war was all about oil has vanished from its website, though no retraction has appeared so far. Presumably one will be forthcoming, as the story was pretty obviously bogus.

The good news: Now The Guardian can call itself the New York Times of Britain! They were just Dowdifying, you see. . . .

UPDATE: Here’s more, from The Scotsman:

ALONE in a national newspaper industry congenitally reluctant to correct its mistakes, the Guardian has an exemplary record: its famous “corrections and clarifications” column has even been turned into a book.

All the more mysterious, therefore, that it has yet to correct or clarify its Saturday page-one splash which alleged that Jack Straw, the Foreign Secretary, and his US counterpart, Colin Powell, met in New York’s Waldorf Hotel just before a crucial UN session on Iraq on 5 February and moaned to each other about the poor quality of their intelligence on Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction.

Some sort of clarification, at the very least, is surely in order because no evidence has yet been produced to show that the alleged meeting between Mr Powell and Mr Straw ever took place, much less that they said what the Guardian alleges. . . .

The story’s provenance is not helped by the joint byline: Richard Norton-Taylor is an experienced correspondent on intelligence matters, but his name comes after Dan Plesch, who is not even a journalist but a “defence expert” who was opposed to the Iraq war and whose commentaries at the start of hostilities have not stood the test of time.

Indeed. The correction has been made, but the mystery remains.

ANOTHER UPDATE: The Guardian will reportedly print a full correction of the story tomorrow.

YET ANOTHER UPDATE: Tech Addict observes:

It seems to me that lately, so many journalists are running around trying to make every quote from an administration official into an indictment of the Bush Administration. It’s happened twice this week, both to statements made by Paul Wolfowitz. The first time it happened, it was Vanity Fair. I was even sucked in by the reports made on CBS Radio news that said that he’d admitted they’d manufactured an acceptable reason to go into Iraq. I thought it sounded just awful. Then I read the transcript which showed that Vanity Fair had clipped the quote to make it condemning.

Now it’s a story in the Guardian that’s causing hullaballoo all over the blogosphere. It seems that in their hurry to condemn the Bush Administration for something, anything, they’re manufacturing evidence, which, if memory serves, is just what they’re accusing the Bush administration of doing.

Well put. Sometimes, in a feeding frenzy, the sharks get bitten too. Sometimes they even get so excited that they bite themselves. Something similar seems to be going on here.

Meanwhile Roger Simon wonders if these attacks on Wolfowitz are because he’s Jewish, making him “a natural target for the upper class hit men of the so-called British Left, who for many decades have often had a certain, shall we say, disdain for my co-religionists.”

AUSTIN BAY WRITES:

Why are we unpopular at the United Nations? Consider the U.N.’s membership list. Most of the so-called nation-states are anything but. Sure, they have Rand McNally borders, but they aren’t modern states rooted in legitimate, popular authority. These hoaxes are areas controlled by the primitive sovereignty of tyranny, empires of fear where autocrats (often backed by a favored ethnic group, a tribe with a flag) call the shots.

Yeah, they hate us. The autocrats running the fake states hate us because they fear the liberty that empowers us will encourage their oppressed to topple them.

Can we give Mugabe a teensy shove?

UPDATE: Read this post by Daniel Drezner and follow the links to see why they’re so nervous.

IMPRISONED IRANIAN BLOGGER SINA MOTALLEBI was released from prison a while back. He’s doing fine, but still not blogging. Thus do the mullahs hope to cover up the nature of their regime. But really, of course, they’re just making it clearer.

HEY — I’LL BET THESE GUYS WEREN’T FIRING BLANKS:

Zimbabwean police raided a private Harare hospital yesterday, the third day of a week-long national strike, beating and arresting several patients, according to doctors.

Ten police accompanied by youths from the ruling Zanu-PF party stormed into the Avenues Clinic, Harare’s largest private hospital, and assaulted many of the 150 people seeking treatment for their injuries sustained in anti-government protests. Police herded several patients into a van.

Many of the patients were being treated for gunshot wounds and other injuries received at peaceful public protests against President Robert Mugabe’s regime.

The police surrounded the hospital and ordered away injured people coming in for treatment, said health workers.

Government hospitals have refused to treat anyone suspected of being hurt in the demonstrations.

Somebody should kill Mugabe. Sooner rather than later. Of course, Mugabe’s gun control program has made that more difficult, and given him a free hand to — surprise — arm his thugs and be sure they won’t meet serious opposition.

THOSE “CONSERVATIVES” who are celebrating the passage of partial-birth abortion legislation in the House are guilty of Congressional Activism. Constitutionally, Congress lacks the power to regulate abortion, and it’s very difficult to style oneself a defender of limited government and federalism while supporting this legislation.

ANOTHER ONE BITES THE DUST: The Guardian retracts a story:

In our front page lead on May 31 headlined “Straw, Powell had serious doubts over their Iraqi weapons claims,” we said that the foreign secretary Jack Straw and his US counterpart Colin Powell had met at the Waldorf Hotel in New York shortly before Mr Powell addressed the United Nations on February 5. Mr Straw has now made it clear that no such meeting took place. The Guardian accepts that and apologises for suggesting it did.

A reader emails that Staw wasn’t even in New York when the meeting was supposed to have happened. I suppose that would account for the apologetic tone.

MICKEY KAUS UNVEILS the Howell-o-Meter, which currently estimates Howell Raines’ chances of being shown the door at 70%.

ORIN KERR WONDERS if blogs and SSRN will change legal scholarship by breaking down the law-review hierarchies. I think the answer is yes, but as I wrote a while ago, email lists and LEXIS have already changed things rather significantly.

TACITUS HAS more on the bogus Wolfowitz oil quote. It’s amazing who’s falling for it.

But will Atrios stay a group blog? Maybe it is the wave of the future.

Meanwhile Christopher Johnson identifies more desperate efforts to regain the moral high ground via lies. I don’t think that approach will work. . . .

UPDATE: Daniel Drezner calls it “galactically stupid distortion at The Guardian.” Drezner notes:

The Guardian’s version of events in such a ludicrous distortion of Wolfowitz’s words that it falls into the “useful idiots” category. By apparently relying on a German translation/distortion of Wolfowitz’s words — when multiple English-language sources of the actual comments were available — I have to wonder if the Guardian is guilty of libel in this case.

Hmm.

“YOU CAN’T TRUST A NEWSPAPER THAT DOESN’T HAVE CARTOONS”

HERE’S GRAPHIC PROOF that I’m a centrist. Told you so! And fancy graphics don’t lie!

MICKEY KAUS’S GEARBOX REVIEW OF THE HONDA ELEMENT is terrific — full of useful information and witty Kausisms:

This would be a good vehicle to drive across the country, if you were accompanied by a bunch of entertaining friends and a vast array of salty snacks. . . .

The longer you live with the Element, the more its Honda-esque virtues–reliability, stability, fit & finish, efficiency–grow on you. It’s what I think I’d be like as a husband!

Note to Moxie — take Kaus for a spin!

BLANK CD-Rs are now practically free. I remember when they cost several bucks each. This kind of deflation is all right by me.

PORPHYROGENITUS LOOKS AT DISTORTED MISQUOTES IN THE MEDIA:

You know, we’ve had three or four of this type of thing in rapid-fire succession over a period of little over a week (scroll to “The NYT Against Ashcroft”), massive, willful distortions of what people said, printed in (supposedly) reputable newspapers. . . .

Look, I’m not one of those people who goes on and on about the superiority of blogs and all that. But I am starting to wonder just how much of what we were told in the Newspapers of Record just wasn’t so. Actually, I’m wondering less and less: the answer is this isn’t very new. People are just more aware of it now, and the Real Reporters© find this turn of events unbecoming. I mean, don’t we know that they’re just doing their jobs as reporters, to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable? If that means twisting what someone says to make them and their supporters uncomfortable and confirm for the afflicted (say, the anti-war left) what they always “knew”, then. . .

. . .That’s The Way It Is.

Indeed. Meanwhile Jay Caruso notes that the Wolfowitz misquote is being merrily spread around.

As evidence of the true brutality of Saddam’s regime comes out, the efforts to seize the moral high ground somehow, anyhow by those who opposed the war are growing more and more desperate.

UPDATE: Bill Hobbs has more.

THE BELGRAVIA DISPATCH says that The Guardian is grossly distorting a comment by Paul Wolfowitz to make it sound like the war was about oil:

This time Wolfowitz is accused of now admitting the U.S. went to war because of oil.

The Guardian is headlining as follows:

“Oil was the main reason for military action against Iraq, a leading White House hawk has claimed, confirming the worst fears of those opposed to the US-led war.

The US deputy defence secretary, Paul Wolfowitz – who has already undermined Tony Blair’s position over weapons of mass destruction (WMD) by describing them as a “bureaucratic” excuse for war – has now gone further by claiming the real motive was that Iraq is “swimming” in oil.

The latest comments were made by Mr Wolfowitz in an address to delegates at an Asian security summit in Singapore at the weekend, and reported today by German newspapers Der Tagesspiegel and Die Welt.

Asked why a nuclear power such as North Korea was being treated differently from Iraq, where hardly any weapons of mass destruction had been found, the deputy defence minister said: “Let’s look at it simply. The most important difference between North Korea and Iraq is that economically, we just had no choice in Iraq. The country swims on a sea of oil.”

But this quote is inaccurate on its face as well as taken completely out of context. Wolfowitz was answering a query regarding why the U.S. thought using economic pressure would work with respect to North Korea and not with regard to Iraq:

“The United States hopes to end the nuclear standoff with North Korea by putting economic pressure on the impoverished nation, U.S. Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz said Saturday. North Korea would respond to economic pressure, unlike Iraq, where military action was necessary because the country’s oil money was propping up the regime, Wolfowitz told delegates at the second annual Asia Security Conference in Singapore.”

“The country is teetering on the edge of economic collapse,” Wolfowitz said. “That I believe is a major point of leverage.” “The primary difference between North Korea and Iraq is that we had virtually no economic options in Iraq because the country floats on a sea of oil,” he said. Wolfowitz did not elaborate on how Washington intends to put economic pressure on North Korea, but said other countries in the region helping it should send a message that “they’re not going to continue doing that if North Korea continues down the road it’s on.” [my emphasis]

Now it might not have been smart of Wolfowitz, on the heels of the Vanity Fair interview imbroglio (however much the press distorted his comments there too) to describe Iraqi oil supplies using evocative language like “the country floats on a sea of oil.” But any judicious analysis of his comments begs the conclusion that he was making an explicit reference to his contention that there were no viable punitive economic options with regard to pressuring Iraq on compliance with relevant U.N. resolutions given the monies the Baathist regime could access because of its oil supplies. This is patently different than the Guardian’s spin (no, lie) that Wolfowitz said the U.S. had “no choice” regarding going to war in Iraq because of a too-tempting-to-pass-up-neo-imperialistic-oil grab-opportunity.

It is hugely irresponsible of the Guardian to run such a distorted, tabloid-style headline.

(Bolding added). Say it ain’t so! Next they’ll be rewriting Salam Pax’s stuff to keep The Guardian from looking bad!

I predict, however, that a lot of people will jump on this false report and keep repeating it — because that’ll save them from having to talk about mass graves full of children. To coin a phrase: “Pheh.”

UPDATE: Here’s a direct link to the transcript.

Those online transcripts are hell on Dowdifications.

ACCORDING TO THIS CATO PAPER, coauthored by two Knoxville attorneys, federal grand juries have too much power. I’m no expert on this, but my sense is that the real problem isn’t just the power, but rather their lack of independence. Federal grand juries are mostly just arms of the prosecution, whose nominal — but not real — independence is useful for prosecutors.

Make ’em genuinely independent, and, well, the politicians would be running for cover, I suspect, which is why they aren’t.

READER JOHN KLUGE EMAILS FROM IRAQ:

I am in Irbil in Kurdistan northern Iraq. Someone explained the history of this place to me today. The mountains here are bare and devoid of trees. They used be forested. Covered with trees. There used to be so many trees in Irbil that you couldn’t see around corners. Now it looks like Kansas or really more like parts of Montana.

The reason is that Saddam cut down all of the trees in Kurdistan in 1988. He bulldozed 4000 of the 5000 villages in Kurdistan and the Kurds ran to the mountains for safety, so he cut down all of the trees on these mountains and killed all of the game, so that the Kurds would have no wood for fires and no food to eat. He was incredibly effective. The Kurds are now replanting the trees. You can see hundreds of tiny trees if you look closely at the mountains. I didn’t notice them until they were pointed out to me. In Kirkuk they found a mass grave of Kurdish children. One of the U.N. guys offered to take us out and show it to us. I haven’t taken him up on it. I have no reason to go there and I feel like it would be disrespectful to go and gawk. I guess some of the children were buried with their toys and dolls.

It makes me sick everytime I surf the net and see all these people in Europe and back home saying that the war was not justified because we haven’t found 50 tons of sarin gas yet. I wish those people would come to this country and look at ruined villages between here and Kirkuk and the bare mountains. Anyone who protested against this war and defended Saddam ought to be ashamed of themselves. Its just unimaginable the things that went on here.

And largely unmentioned, by those who are still kvetching.

FOUR BLOGS THAT CHANGED THE WORLD? I think that Hugh Hewitt overstates InstaPundit’s influence. I think, though, that he’s right to spot the growing power of the blogosphere, and he’s dead-on with this point:

Theodore White began his account of the 1964 presidential campaign this way: “Every man who writes of politics shapes unknowingly in his mind some fanciful metaphor to embrace all the wild, apparently erratic events and personalities in the process he tries to describe.”

It is crazy to try and develop a metaphor for the new politics–a politics of a 24/7 news cycle, cable land, talk radio, FreeRepublic.com, and DemocraticUnderground.com , and thousands of blogs– but the opening scene from “Gangs of New York” comes to mind. Campaigns would be well-advised to designate a team just to keep track of and respond to web-generated stories and opinion, starting with the Big Four.

Howard Dean seems ahead of the curve on this.

UPDATE: Thanks, Hugh — for one more reader:

Brief demographics: 18 years old, female, Florida, headed come September to the University of Chicago. I was introduced to weeklystandard.com perhaps two months ago and have rejoiced daily since then in the discovery of a sort of news forum I had no idea existed.

Hugh Hewitt’s article today is doing the same thing for me with blogs. I’ve just spent a good hour browsing through the four he mentions, and I just got a real kick after reading your entire TechCentralStation article, then returning to your site at precisely 11:45 to find a new posting. Thanks; this is fun.

In the Blogosphere, we naturally tend to forget how few people (in relation to the population as a whole, or even the population of Internet users) actually know about blogs. Given that most people still haven’t heard about blogs at all, the kind of growth that John Dvorak is now predicting seems plausible.

BOY, ALL SORTS OF THINGS are coming out now that Hillary’s book publicity is gearing up.

THE INCONCEIVABILITY OF GOOGLE, and the lessons to be drawn from that, are the subjects of my TechCentralStation column today, which carries the somewhat racy-sounding title Horizontal Knowledge:

Just try this thought experiment: Imagine that it’s 1993. The Web is just appearing. And imagine that you – an unusually prescient type – were to explain to people what they could expect in the summer of 2003. Universal access to practically all information. From all over the place – even in bars. And all for free!

I can imagine the questions the skeptics would have asked: How will this be implemented? How will all of this information be digitized and made available? (Lots of examples along the line of “a thousand librarians with scanners would take fifty years to put even a part of the Library of Congress online, and who would pay for that?”) Lots of questions about how people would agree on standards for wireless data transmission – “it usually takes ten years just to develop a standard, much less put it into the marketplace!” – and so on, and so on. “Who will make this stuff available for free? People want to be paid to do things!” “Why, even if we start planning now, there’s no way we’ll have this in ten years!”

Actually, that final statement is true. If we had started planning in 1993, we probably wouldn’t have gotten here by now.

Read the whole thing, of course.