N.Z. BEAR:

Ms. Hilton has the celebrity press corps to do her dirty work for her: here in the blog world, we do it differently. In the blogosphere we are all each other’s paparazzi. Stalker and stalkee; celebrity and gossip — we each play both parts in our turn.

But that’s okay.

COLLIN MAY is back blogging at Innocents Abroad, and has the first post of several up on French author Nicolas Baverez, who, it is reported, has French elites unhappy.

I SHOULD HAVE MENTIONED THIS EARLIER, but Rich Galen is now blogging from Iraq.

SOME INTERESTING REPORTS FROM IRAQ, via Maj. Sean Bannion and John Burns. Both, in different ways, raise the specter of the United States leaving Iraq too soon.

I’d be very upset, to put it mildly, if we cut and run. However, I don’t think that’s what’s going on. Rumsfeld says the troops aren’t coming out — this is just about Iraqi self-determination. That’s a key distinction. (We’re still in Germany, and they’re self-governing, after all.) And it was just announced that the Civil Affairs battalion here — which spent quite a while in Afghanistan and Bosnia — is going to Iraq in February. Doesn’t sound like a cut-and-run to me. The extent to which Iraqis are ready to actually run their country is another question. But, you know, Russia was a mess (and remains one) after the fall of the Soviet Union, for many of the same reasons. But it’s still better the way it is, for them and for us. So it doesn’t have to be perfect. Just good enough. The problems that Bannion describes remind me of Nigeria, which isn’t a great place, but it’s better than a lot of countries in Africa. Likewise, Iraq isn’t a great place, but it’s better already than a lot of countries in the mideast, and it’s on the path to improvement. Given the enormous damage to the physical — and especially the social — capital of the country done by decades of dictatorship, that’s good enough.

Looking at the domestic scene, and at the risk of sounding too much like a real pundit, I have to wonder about the nature of this announcement. It seems to me that Bush is managing to maneuver his critics into complaining about pulling out too soon, which will have the effect of taking the war off the table as an election issue. This occurred to me when I got the following email:

I just finished watching an interview with Tom Daschle on Fox News Sunday, and when asked about the speeding up of the end of occupation in Iraq, Daschle responded “What we need is not an exit strategy, but a plan for success” and went on to say why we should not leave too early.

Hmm. Makes you wonder, doesn’t it? [LATER: Here’s a link to the transcript, which does indeed bear this out. Daschle is calling for more troops and more resources, though he also wants the French and Germans in.]

For some deeper perspective on cultural issues — echoing some of the things that Bannion says — I highly recommend this interview with P.J. O’Rourke in The Atlantic. And regarding the bigger picture, ponder on the question I asked earlier: Is it 1946? Or 1943?

UPDATE: Here’s the text of the transitional agreement. And this doesn’t sound like a cut-and-run.

ANOTHER UPDATE: BSC says it’s 1862 — and, in another post, notes that we’ve been in Kosovo for quite a few years now.

HILLARY 2004? I’m skeptical, but Howard Fineman is on the story. I do think that this bit is clearly right:

The Republicans in the White House want Howard Dean to win the nomination. The Democrats in Washington want Dick Gephardt or John Kerry or even Wes Clark to win the nomination. And the media? The media is hoping and praying Hillary ends up with the nomination.

Well, it would make things more interesting.

JEFF JARVIS: “If I’m one, you are two, mate.”

DAVID AARONOVITCH IS WELCOMING PRESIDENT BUSH TO LONDON:

The double standards here are obvious but worth a reminder. During the week anti-Bush protesters will, we’re told, be splashing red paint to symbolise the spilled blood of the people of Iraq. No such red paint was splashed around London after Halabja, after the 1991 Shia and Kurdish uprisings or during the Iran-Iraq war, almost as if that were not real Iraqi blood. Blood, after all, is only blood if Americans spill it.

No crimson splotches were created during the state visit of Romanian tyrant Nicolae Ceausescu in 1978, a visit which – because of Romania’s semi-dissident position in the Soviet bloc – suited both cold warriors and sections of the Left. Earlier this year the Chechnya-enmired President Putin escaped almost any kind of demonstration. . . .

It isn’t America that sends ambulances to blow up aid workers or Istanbul synagogues. It is America, above all, that is bearing the cost of helping to create a new Iraq – a new Iraq which, despite the violence, is being born in towns such as Hilla and cities such as Basra. And yet some of our writers and protesters – betraying their own professed ideals – identify with bombers and not teachers, administrators and policemen who are building the country.

Where is the red paint to protest against the blasts at Najaf, of the UN in Baghdad, of the Red Cross, of the synagogues, of the Bali night-club, of the Arab-Jewish restaurant in Haifa? Where are the ‘No Suicide Bombings’ posters in the Muswell Hill windows? Or do you really believe we can save ourselves by constructing a huge wall around these islands, or around America, and painting it with smileys? That maybe then the ills of the world will leave us alone?

Fat chance. (Via William Sjostrom).

THIS SUCKS: MP3.com is shutting down.

THE BLOGOSPHERE IS, LIKE, TOTALLY INBRED: Er, except that I haven’t ever heard of most of these blogs, which are nonetheless a big thing in their part of the sphere, I gather.

There are more things in the blogosphere, Jennifer Howard, than are dreamt of in your articles. . . .

UPDATE: Ralph Luker has more thoughts inspired by Howard’s piece.

I DON’T KNOW WHAT MARK BYRON IS THINKING with this post, but it’s well into Ted Rall territory, it seems to me. He should be ashamed. Perhaps he will be, when he sobers up. . . .

UPDATE: Kevin Holtsberry has another take.

SOMEBODY FROM AN OUTFIT CALLED “INFOTEL” is threatening to sue Justene Adamec. XRLQ has a roundup of blogosphere reactions.

Blogosferics calls it the boneheaded lawsuit of the year. (It’s probably made more boneheaded by the fact that Justene is an attorney.) I don’t know anything about the underlying facts, especially as the things they complained about are no longer online, which makes it quite hard to judge, but if the comments people are posting are true, perhaps law enforcement might want to look into things. And Steve Verdon says beware of how you answer questions from telemarketers.

ANKARA BLOGGER KRIS LOFGREN is blogging this morning’s horrific synagogue bombings in Istanbul, which are apparently the work of Al Qaeda. Lots of links and photos; just keep scrolling for as long as you can stand it.

I REALLY should be watching Hardball:

U.S. TV network news about Iraq as distorted as al-Jazeera? Checking in from Iraq on Wednesday’s Hardball with Chris Matthews as part of that show’s look this week at “Iraq: The Real Story,” Bob Arnot highlighted a Muslim ayatollah in Iraq who “is furious at the press coverage. He says not only American television, but Arabic satellite TV, such as Al-Jazeera and the Abu Dhabi station, have mis-portrayed the great success that is Iraq after the fall of Saddam Hussein.”

Arnot, MRC analyst Geoffrey Dickens noticed, documented how “Iraqis themselves are angrier than the American administration about the barrage of negative stories coming out of Iraq” on Arab television.

Read the whole thing.

UPDATE: Reader Steve Hornbeck emails:

Regarding the Hardball story on Iraqis being angry over US media coverage, isn’t it way past time that the news media started looking into the possibility that some of the negative feelings that the rest of the world has about the US are the result of the US news media’s behavior? If you were an Iraqi who for years saw American reporters playing ball with the Hussein government and then saw that those same reporters had mostly negative things to say about your liberation, how would you feel about Americans?

Hmm. About like that, I imagine.

UPDATE: Here’s an interesting letter from a soldier in Afghanistan, with more comments on the media coverage.

Meanwhile reader John Nevins emails:

With regards to Steve Hornbeck’s comment on International opinion being against us because of media coverage, I think he is right on. In my travels to other countries, I find a lot of their opinions of us come straight from our own media coverage (because that is really all they have to base their opinions on). However, the problem is not just biased media coverage, but also our (good) quality of being very self-critical. I have found that dissent is a very American thing and not really found in other countries to the extent that we have it here. For the most part, though, dissent is good and important, because it forces us (and our leaders) to really watch what they do. (e.g. your constant critiquing of the Patriot Act for an American is a constant critique of one thing our government is doing that you disagree with, for outside observers not used to American self-critique, it would be seen as another example of how awful our government is). My favorite example was watching a German review of the movie Legally Blonde 2, in which the reviewer found it fascinating to see all the corruption in the U.S. government and how horrible our politicians are. Now, I’m no fan of politicians, and I do believe that there are issues of corruption in our government, but I think it’s telling that the Germany reviewer is focusing on U.S. corruption (since it is put right there in
front of her in a movie), as opposed to the far more extensive corruption in the German and EU governments (about which, I’m not expecting much European comment or even a light-hearted comedy anytime soon).

I think it’s telling that — although we’re always hearing how much more sophisticated and knowledgeable Europeans are — a German reviewer thinks he can learn something about the actual operation of the U.S. government from watching Legally Blonde 2.

STEPHEN F. HAYES has a story in the Weekly Standard about the Al Qaeda / Saddam connection. Unfortunately, the Standard’s site has been down since last night. But you can read excerpts here and here, where the interlineated comments add a lot of interest and perspective.

UPDATE: Read this, too.

And, though not precisely related, read this, as well.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Roger Simon observes that this is devastating evidence of how Big Media folks missed the Iraq/Al Qaeda story: “The other major media are lagging behind perhaps because this information cries out: WHERE WERE THEY? Well, they were reporting on our “quagmire” in Iraq while a ton of justification for our intervention was waiting for them to sift through. Why weren’t they interested?”

Why, indeed?

MORE: Here’s a link to the story.

STILL MORE: Robert Tagorda has links to various blog reactions.

MORE STILL: Hmm. This news release from DoD is interesting. It denies that DoD has found a connection between Saddam and Al Qaeda, but doesn’t actually say that there isn’t one. I think this is the key bit: “The classified annex was not an analysis of the substantive issue of the relationship between Iraq and al Qaida, and it drew no conclusions.” I’m not sure what to make of that — “Steve Hayes said it, we didn’t” seems the best reading — but no doubt it will get a full airing in time.

AND MORE: Josh Chafetz has more on this. Read it.

I’M CONFUSED. Mark Kleiman has a rather overwrought post in which he’s angry at me for impugning Wesley Clark’s patriotism. The only problem is that the only one doing so is, er, Kleiman. Here, in its entirety, is what I wrote:

ANDREW SULLIVAN IS FISKING WESLEY CLARK, who rather incoherently says that the war in Kosovo was “technically illegal” because the Security Council didn’t approve it, but that it was still okay, while the war in Iraq wasn’t:

Let’s go back here. Clark essentially concedes that the war in Kosovo was, under international law, indistinguishable from the war in Iraq. Actually, even that’s not entirely true. It should be recalled that the United States and its allies, particularly Great Britain, secured a 15-0 Security Council Resolution demanding complete and unfettered access to potential sites of WMD development–or else–in Iraq. The “else” was subject to debate, but the notion that it ruled out any military action is one only Dominique de Villepin would argue with a straight face. No such 15-0 vote occurred at any time before the Kosovo war. So, if anything, the war against Iraq had more international legitimacy than the war in Kosovo. If viewed as a continuation of the 1991 war–the terms of which cease-fire Saddam had grotesquely and systematically violated–it was impeccably legitimate. The 1991 war, after all, was one of very few post-World War II conflicts that had unimpeachable U.N. credentials.

The real problem with the Iraq war is that it’s (1) waged by a Republican President; and (2) obviously in the United States’ national interest. To some people, those characteristics are enough to brand it evil.

Sullivan goes on to call Clark’s latest claims about Bush “Ross-Perot crazy.” Read the whole thing.

But, just for the record, I had no thought of impugning Clark’s patriotism when I made that post. Just his judgment and his fitness to be President. As has been widely discussed in the blogosphere, some Democratic foreign-policy types seem to regard military action that doesn’t have any direct benefit to the United States as morally preferable to military action that does. I don’t think that such a view is unpatriotic — just unserious, and unsuitable for anyone who might be President.

SEND TACITUS TO IRAQ! No, really.

I HAVEN’T PAID MUCH ATTENTION to the ongoing judicial-nomination fracas. But other people have observations on the subject.

GENETICALLY MODIFIED FOODS — an ancient Native American tradition?

WASHINGTON (AP) — Ancient Americans were changing corn genes through selective breeding more than 4,000 years ago, according to researchers who say the modifications produced the large cobs and fat kernels that make corn one of humanity’s most important foods.

In a study that compared the genes of corn cobs recovered in Mexico and the southwestern United States, researchers found that three key genetic variants were systematically enhanced, probably through selective cultivation, over thousands of years.

The technique was not as sophisticated as the methods used for modern genetically modified crops, but experts said in a study released Thursday that the general effect was the same: genetic traits were amplified or introduced to create plants with improved traits and greater yield.

Next people will be blaming them for massive extinctions. Oh, wait. . . .

UPDATE: Some people are saying that, well, selective breeding isn’t gene-splicing. No, it’s not. (Duh). But it does involve rather drastic modifications to the genome over time. Just compare a Chihuahua to a Great Dane. And certainly there’s nothing “natural” about the products of selective breeding.

WHAT TERRORISM is about:

Nina Joubran met her would-be husband on the Internet, a fitting footnote for a woman who spent much of her day tapping away at a keyboard.

For more than a year, the young librarian at Lebanon’s Balamand University exchanged e-mails with her new cyberfriend. They chatted about everything, but the conversations often turned to Canada. Elie Joubran had studied here and he was anxious to return one day for good.

By the time the pair finally met face to face in early 2002 — they were married by that summer — moving to Canada had evolved into a mutual goal.

“They had their hopes to live a beautiful and prosperous life in Canada and they looked forward to it,” Hazem Wehbe, Ms. Joubran’s cousin, recalled yesterday. “She looked forward to escaping this style of life in the Middle East. They wanted to live a free life, independent.”

The couple’s plan was brought to a violent halt just before midnight on Saturday, when a group of terrorists unleashed a suicide bomb in the Saudi Arabian housing complex where they lived.

Ms. Joubran was among the 17 people killed in the attack. Her husband survived, but he remains in a Saudi hospital, recovering from both wounds on his body and the knowledge his new wife is gone.

Call me crazy, but I don’t think this happened because the United States didn’t ratify Kyoto.

ONE READER, a gentle soul, thought that I was too hard on Ted Rall when I called him a “loathsome human being.” Well, I generally ignore Rall, so even fairly regular InstaPundit readers might not know much about him. You might start with this fairly typical cartoon in which Bush is a crazed dictator, while Colin Powell (I think it’s Powell, but with Rall’s drawing skills it’s hard to be sure) holds a copy of a book entitled “Our Kampf.”

But for the real Rall backstory, read this roundup of Rall stuff from Michele Catalano, and this update by Michele as well. Then read this piece by Eric Scheie.

Rall’s only redeeming feature is as evidence that the talk about the crushing of dissent in Ashkkkroft’s Amerikkka is entirely bogus. People got locked up in the Civil War, in Reconstruction, in World War I, and World War II, for milder stuff than this. Which is why, though I generally ignore Rall, it’s worth turning over his rock occasionally: Just as a reminder of the state of dissent in 21st century America.

IT TAKES TWO BLOGGERS TO HANDLE A WHOPPER like this one. So, read what Andrew Sullivan and Kevin Holtsberry have to say on the subject.

Slate needs to improve the quality-control on its weekly features, or give ’em up as weekly features. This one is just embarrassing.

HERE’S AN INTERVIEW with former Reverse Cowgirl blogger Susannah Breslin. Her book, You’re a Bad Man, Aren’t You? is out now.

SADDAM HUSSEIN — the blog interview. Don’t miss it.

HATE CRIME HOAXES AT — HOLD YOUR BREATH — SAN FRANCISCO STATE UNIVERSITY:

Due to an ongoing and escalating feud with her roommates, Jackson wrote the words in an attempt to get relocated to another room. According to the report, when told she was a suspect, she explained why she did it.

“I was requesting a roommate move, and I was given that advice that in order for the roommate move to be taken seriously, things needed to occur … issues needed to occur, and that if I really wanted, I could go ahead and pursue those issues, so the issue was basically that I wanted a roommate change.”

A similar seemingly unrelated incident occured in Mary Park Hall. After a supposed hate crime involving a watermelon in early September did not receive enough attention by campus authorities, freshman Leah Miller decided to write the word ‘NIGG’ on fellow resident Brandi Parr’s door on or around Sept. 20, according to a police report. Then she wrote a note bearing the same slur and claimed to her residential adviser that it was slipped under her door.

Miller said she was pressured into doing this by an older student, who claimed that she “had” to do it in order for the University to recognize racism in the community and that things like this had been done before.

Sheesh.

PLAGIARIZING BLOGGERS? This has to be embarrassing for the New York Times. Venkat Balasubramani thinks it’s poetic justice. Or something like that.

UPDATE: A Hollywood reader emails about Bernard Weinraub, subject of this flap: “One of the great on-going scandals hereabouts is that he still covers the Hollywood Beat for the NYT when he has been married for several years to Amy Pascal, studio head at Sony. It’s extreme conflict of interest. Hard to fathom.”

Yeah, Mickey Kaus had something on that recently:

So why is the spouse of Amy Pascal, who runs one of the biggest Hollywood studios (as one of three Vice-Chairmen of Sony Pictures) writing a New York Times profile of Jack Valenti, head of the movie studios’ trade association and lobbying arm, the Motion Picture Association of America? It doesn’t take much imagination to see the potential for conflict when Pascal’s husband, Bernard Weinraub, covers his wife’s business.

This seems to me to be a bigger ethical problem than sort-of lifting a paragraph from a blog. It’s no surprise, though, that the latter gets more attention than the former. In fact — as you can read in this chapter on plagiarism from the book on ethics that Peter Morgan and I wrote — such an instinct for the capillary is typical.