BAD NEWS FOR THE MILITARY-INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX: Apparently we’re buying more beans than bullets.

VIRGINIA POSTREL’S BOOK gets excerpted in Men’s Journal. Who says men don’t care about style?

WINDS OF CHANGE has an Iran news roundup that’s worth your time, with lots of useful links.

TIM BLAIR has identified another smarmily pretentious Britjourno sneer-piece,. It calls for another James Lileks Olive Garden Fisking. Except that, really, it’s just too dumb to be worth it. Instead, let’s just marvel that people still get paid to write this sort of thing, and that others pay to read it. Like the “porcelain collector-plate” industry, it’s proof that tastes differ.

CLAY SHIRKY ON WHAT THE UNITED NATIONS DOESN’T GET:

The PDF description invites us to think of the internet as a highway for ideas! And, we are told, the creators of the HelloWorld project believe that “The power of words can overcome dissent.” and “Information technology can strengthen the voice of every person, worldwide.” (Working out the byplay between those two ideas is evidently left as an excercise for the reader.)

I used to have to deal with clients who talked like this all the time:

Client: We want community.
Me: That means letting people talk to one another.
Client: Oooh, that’s bad. Can’t we just have them send testimonials in, and we’ll post the ones we like?
Me: I thought you said something about communi…
Client: I know! We’ll call it the “ACME® RocketSled Testimonial Community!”

I used to think I had to have these conversations because advertisers were stupid, but now I recognize that most organizations work this way. Faced with the idea that they could end up hosting unfiltered conversation, they will instinctively opt for “Letters to the Editor”-style control, and then label it community (and themselves progressive.)

So here we have a governmental organization and an artist collaborating on something they call dialogue, but is in fact just the 1996 Joe Boxer billboard, now with new laser beams!

And no underwear models.

UPDATE: Michele Catalano says that IndyMedia has a similar problem:

Indymedia has the potential and the reader base to be something important and powerful for the left. By moderating it down to specific ideologies (which not all on the left follow) and dismissing anyone who does not fall in line with ANSWER type activism, IMC is doing a great disservice to those it purports to serve.

My suggestion is to open it up a little more, let people speak their minds and stop making room for every conspiracy theory in the world while censoring posts that are just reporting facts – even if these facts are not ones that you want to hear.

And some underwear models would be nice.

PAUL BOUTIN WRITES that the RIAA’s amnesty deal is bogus. No surprise.

As Ken Layne wrote last year:

What happens when an industry mistreats its customers and its suppliers? When 8,999 of 9,000 audits show shoddy accounting practices? When a core business is bungled and the marketplace shrugs and moves on? When scandals and greed lead to massive layoffs and massive disgust?

The answer: it sues its customers.

REMEMBERING 9/11: Michele Catalano’s Voices project continues to be updated. Jeff Jarvis has a remarkable story, too. And don’t miss Christopher Hitchens’ take on the subject.

UPDATE: Jeff Jarvis: “This war didn’t start yesterday. This war is not over yet. This war is bigger than we are admitting. ” He also calls Ric Burns’ PBS documentary on 9/11 “damnably wrong-headed.”

MATT WELCH IDENTIFIES “THE LAST GASP OF POLITICAL CORRECTNESS” in a new National Post column on the California recall. “So has political correctness run amok once again? Rather, it is still sputtering, ever less influential, at a few last bastions: touchy-feely monopolist newspapers and identity-politics groups.”

In what’s probably not a coincidence, touchy-feely monopolist newspapers and identity-politics groups are ever less influential, too.

MERDE IN FRANCE NOTES an interesting bit from the French press:

We are very interested in American deaths in Iraq. If we were as passionate about our own elderly, we would have had fewer victims. If the Americans are as moved by our deaths as we are by their deaths, they’ll soon make a landing in France to stop the massacre. It’s just that, and we will never admit it, every American soldier killed in Iraq causes, if not happiness, at least a certain satisfaction.

I’d already kind of figured that out, but it’s nice to see it admitted in print.

RADLEY BALKO has set up an online symposium on globalization and free trade, with particpation from everyone from CATO to The Nation.

Here’s a page featuring a debate between Robert Kuttner of lefty mag The American Prospect (the stuffy-looking one) and Johan Norberg, author of In Defense of Global Capitalism (the radical-looking one). Ah, the times they are a-changin’!

DANIEL DREZNER LOOKS at the current world trade talks and notes:

Beyond the economic commitment to freer trade, there’s a political bonus to the U.S. for supporting agricultural liberalization. Many Europeans try to paint the U.S. as a global bully in world politics. In the global economy, however, the big bad wolf is the EU. The growing assertiveness of developing countries in the WTO represents an opportunity for the United States. If the Bush administration is smart, they can get what they want in the Doha round and look like a hero to the developing world in the process.

I think he’s right.

SALAM PAX WRITES on how he became a blogger, and how it has changed his life. I won’t excerpt it — just go read it.

HERE’S ANOTHER STORY THAT WE MISSED (at least, I did), which came to me via the multiply-forwarded email that makes up military samizdat. I don’t know the original source — if you do, please drop me a line.

Click for the full-sized image. The caption reads: “July 4, 2003, Saddam’s Mosul Palace 158 troopers from the 101st Airborne Division re-enlist for another tour in the army. Wonder why the media didn’t make a big deal of it? You suppose it’s because it didn’t fit the whining, bad morale profile they’ve been trying to portray. Naw, that can’t be the reason. Not Katie Collic, Dan Blather and crew.”

The media seem to have lost the battle for hearts and minds in Iraq. On a related theme, don’t miss this post on flypaper by Andrew Sullivan, and, in particular, this report from Iraq by Max Boot.

UPDATE: This piece by Jim Dunnigan on the media’s role in asymmetric warfare is worth reading, too. Excerpt:

In Somalia, the Somalis took over 30 casualties for every American killed or wounded. That was done through the use of superior American training, firepower (on the ground, and in helicopters overhead) and situational awareness (helicopters and more radios.) The battle in Mogadishu is only considered an American defeat because the American government considered 18 dead G.I.’s a defeat, even if over 500 Somali fighters died as well. At the time, the Somalis considered themselves defeated, and feared the return of the Army Rangers the next day to finish off the Somali militia that was terrorizing Mogadishu. The media declared the battle an American defeat, and that’s how it became known. Asymmetric warfare includes having the media in your corner, for that can easily turn a military defeat into a media victory.

The same thing almost happened in Iraq in 2003. During the first two weeks of the American advance into Iraq, any real, apparent or imagined delay of the coalition forces was instantly declared the beginning of a coalition defeat. Even as American troops moved within sight of Baghdad, the pundits were still gravely talking about bloody house to house fighting. There was much talk of asymmetric warfare by the Iraqis, and there was a lot of guerilla type attacks. But the American troops came up with new tactics faster than the Iraqis could think of ways to get around the American advantages.

Using the media as an asymmetric warfare weapon is pretty common, and sometimes it works. It worked in Somalia. It worked several times in the Balkans during the 1990s. Islamic fundamentalists use the media as one of their more potent weapons. The use of imbedded reporters during the Iraq war is seen by the Department of Defense as a use of asymmetric warfare against potentially dangerous media. Indeed, many media pundits have said as much, and darkly warn that the media cannot tolerate more such “defeats” in the future.

Worth reading in its entirety. You would think that media people would reexamine a general bias that makes them feel that they’re doing their job when they’re harming the forces of civilization, and being “used” when they’re not.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Col. Michael M. Smith of the Southern Command emails:

The reenlistment photo was at the entry site of the quasi-official US Army website, www.us.army.mil

It was certainly available for any/every one to use.

Curious that it got so little attention. I suspect that the “official” version didn’t contain the caption. . . .

ANOTHER UPDATE: Not really related, but here are more pictures.

BUSTAMANTE HAS PICKED UP AN ENDORSEMENT from, er, racial-identity-awareness activist Tom Metzger.

LONEWACKO IS BLOGGING ACROSS AMERICA: Think of it as Jack Kerouac, only, er, mostly different.

MORE TROUBLE FOR THE BBC:

THE reputation of Andrew Gilligan, the controversial BBC journalist at the centre of the Hutton Inquiry, has suffered another blow after previously unpublished documents reveal he misled MPs investigating the case for war with Iraq.

The BBC reporter has already been criticised by corporation executives after he e-mailed two members of the foreign affairs select committee (FAC) revealing that Dr David Kelly was the source of a report by the BBC Newsnight journalist Susan Watts.

It has since emerged that three days after sending the e-mail, Mr Gilligan told the committee he had no knowledge of the MoD scientists’ dealings with other journalists, including Ms Watts.

The contradictory statements have infuriated Labour MPs on the committee and will raise further doubts about the credibility of Mr Gilligan as Lord Hutton prepares for the second stage of his inquiry.

Committee member and Labour MP Gisela Stuart said she would be asking her colleagues to consider referring Mr Gilligan to the appropriate Commons authority for his alleged contempt of Parliament.

It’s the coverup that gets you, they say.

UPDATE: The Daily Telegraph is starting “BeebWatch!”

And here is the much-respected BBC world affairs editor, John Simpson, analysing American policy towards Libya last week as moves to end sanctions approached culmination:

John Humphrys: “Has there been a real fear in Libya that the Americans would attack them?”

John Simpson: “Very strong indeed. You see, they really suit the pattern that George W Bush has established – it’s a weak country with a bad reputation. Now, most people don’t realise it’s weak; it’s a bit like Iraq in that sense, [an] easy target to hit if you know what’s really going on, but it looks big if you just watch the morning television programmes in the United States: built up as something terrible, whereas in fact it’s small, weak, and it can’t do anything very much to defend itself. That’s why President Reagan hit it so hard in 1986, because he knew he could get away with it, and I don’t believe that even the Americans thought that it was a major sponsor of state terrorism…”

Note a) the assumption of the stupidity of the American public; b) the assumption of the dishonesty of US Republican administrations; c) the instrusion of an extraneous point about Iraq; d) the condescension of the phrase “even the Americans”; e) the failure to spend time on the behaviour of Libya itself, the country responsible for the Lockerbie bombing. In short, a locus classicus of BBC bias. You can find one virtually every day.

This is what our Beebwatch sets out to do.

I think they’re learning from bloggers. I hope they’ll drop by the Biased BBC blog regularly.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Andrew Sullivan notes that even NPR isn’t defending The Beeb anymore.

JIM BENNETT WRITES ON the way we war.

Meanwhile Max Boot has a new piece on reconstructing Iraq. It’s a firsthand report that’s a must-read.

UPDATE: Here, by the way, is a link to a PDF copy of the Marine Corps’ Small Wars Manual. I’ve meant to post it several times and forgotten. So here it is!

ANOTHER UPDATE: The Army and Marines are sticking around, but some other people are putting the “go” in NGO.

THE DADDY TAX: You don’t hear much about this.

CALL IT “GREGG’S BLOGG:” Gregg Easterbrook now has a blog hosted by The New Republic. He’s looking for a name. Something easier than “&c,” please.

TACITUS HAS A LENGTHY POST ON NORTH KOREA, and on the denial and appeasement that are rampant in the South.

ROGER SIMON DISTINGUISHES sports and politics.

NO DOUBT THIS WILL BE THE LEAD STORY ON ALL THINGS CONSIDERED this afternoon:

For the seventh day in a row, the U.S. military reported no combat deaths Monday – a rare period of calm.

I’m betting that they’ll open with it.

AMIR TAHERI:

Iraq is the only Arab country today where all political parties, from communist to conservative, operate freely. Visitors will be impressed by the openness of the political debate there, something not found anywhere else in the Arab world. Also, for the first time, Iraq has no political prisoners.

Almost 150 newspapers and magazine are now published there, offering a diversity not found in any other Arab country. One theme of these new publications is the need for democratization in the Arab world. This may be putting the cart before the horse. What Arabs, and Muslims in general, most urgently need is basic freedom, without which democracy cannot be built.

The impact of Iraq’s liberation is already felt throughout the region.

There are some interesting examples and quotes. Read this, too.

JOHN LEO WRITES:

Bustamante is no wild-eyed radical. But he has had as much trouble renouncing his connection to MEChA as Trent Lott did in retracting his admiring comment on the Dixiecrats. Bustamante joined MEChA in his college years in the 1970s and has reportedly addressed MEChA groups since. Under heavy prodding at Fox News, he said he would be governor of all the people, but he has offered no direct disavowal of the group.

Now, it’s safe to say that if a leading Republican candidate for governor had any ties at all to a MEChA-like group of white supremacists, past or present, 20 or so reporters would charge out of every California newsroom, eager to commit journalism. . . .

Defenders of MEChA portray it as a benign social group now distant from its radical roots. But that portrait is hard to square with the information put out on MEChA sites today. Those sites tell Chicanos not to work outside the bronze race and to condemn “multinational” alliances. And there are hints of violence. El Plan calls for “self-defense against the occupying forces of the oppressors” and mentions “the utilization of our bodies for war.”

If this is leftover ’60s bluster, why don’t MEChA and Bustamante simply disavow it? The group may be harmless on some campuses, but it clearly positions itself as a virulent identity group with no interest in pluralism or tolerance. Why are the press and the Democrats giving a candidate with this kind of background a pass?

Read the whole thing.