Day: September 24, 2005

Fighting Terrorism: Bush Is the Problem

Jon Ponder

Larry Johnson:

George Bush got it partially right yesterday (Thursday, September 22) when he said that mistakes made by three of his predecessors, including the Reagan administration, had emboldened terrorists and helped set the stage for the Sept. 11 attacks. Unfortunately he ignored the role his own actions have played in making terrorism worse and pushing the Middle East to the brink of a new war. Instead, the President blindly insisted that he is taking America on the right path in Iraq to confront the threat of terrorism. On that point he is wrong; dead wrong.

Why is he wrong? The U.S. invasion and occupation of Iraq is doing the exact opposite of what Bush says U.S. policy was supposed to achieve:

  • Instead of reducing terrorism, Islamic terrorism is spreading dramatically.
  • Instead of winning new supporters for democracy, the war in Iraq is spurring the recruitment and training radical jihadists.
  • Instead of creating a “City on the Hill” that other nations in the Middle East will emulate, Iraq is fissuring and setting the stage for a regional ethnic and religious civil war.

New Rap Song Burning up the Web: ‘George Bush Doesn’t Care About Black People’

Jon Ponder

Boing Boing:

The internets have had their way with Kanye West’s new single “Gold Digger.” An ass-kicking protest remix is now online at FWMJ — it features Kanye’s infamous “George Bush doesn’t care are about black people” quote, and skewers the Bush administration’s response to Hurricane Katrina.

The song is by Houston rappers Damien Randle and Micah Nickerson, also known as the Legendary K.O. Since “George Bush Doesn’t Care About Black People” first appeared on the Web on Sept. 6, managers of six sites that are hosting it say it has been downloaded at least 500,000 times, although such figures are impossible to verify independently, according to the Los Angeles Times.

Here are the lyrics:

“Five days in this … attic

Can’t use the cellphone I keep getting static

Dying ’cause they lying instead of telling us the truth

Other day the helicopters got my neighbors off the roof

Screwed ’cause they say they coming back for us too

That was three days ago, I don’t see no rescue

See a man’s gotta do what a man’s gotta do

Since God made the path that I’m trying to walk through

Swam to the store, tryin’ to look for food

Corner store’s kinda flooded so I broke my way through

I got what I could but before I got through

News say the police shot a black man trying to loot

(Who!?) Don’t like black people

George Bush don’t like black people

George Bush don’t like black people

George Bush don’t like ’em

— Excerpt from “George Bush Doesn’t Care About Black People.”
Lyrics by The Legendary K.O.

Selling Web Content: NYT Fails to Learn from LAT’s Mistake

Jon Ponder

Stupid in New York: In July 2004, the New York Times made a raid on the Los Angeles Times, snapping up four of its top staffers, including film reviewer Manohla Dargis and architecture reviewer Nicolai Ouroussoff.

One factor that led to the reviewers jumping ship was the fact that their work product was only available online to paid subscribers in the Calendar Live section of the LAT’s website. The partitioning of their work behind the “paid” wall meant that their reviews were not as widely circulated as their peers – or even as reviews posted by citizen-reviewers on their blogs. By moving to the NYT, where there was no paid wall, the LAT reviewers made the calculation that they would have more influence because more people would read their reviews.

In the wake of these significant losses of intellectual capital, the LAT took down the paid wall and opened Calendar Live.

A lesson was learned in Los Angeles. But in New York, not so much.

Starting last Monday, the NYT partitioned off some of its most popular writers – including Maureen Dowd and Paul Krugman – behind a paid wall. What is especially interesting about this the theory that the loss of influence of the Times’ opinionistas might actually benefit opinion-writers out in the blogosphere:

Jay Rosen at his Pressthink blog [argues] that with a thousand flowers of opinion blooming on the Web every day, who needs the tired views of the Times’ veterans?

Today, Mark Karlin, who runs Buzzflash.com, said, “It is rather noteworthy that the New York Times chose to force readers to pay to read their columnists, many of whom remain the sole progressive voices in the establishment newspaper of the status quo. It certainly appears a curious choice, considering that Judith Miller’s erroneous stories would still be free, were she free to be an administration conduit once again.”

[…]