Slashdot Mirror

The entire "Iraq war" could have been avoided if France didn't stand up for Iraq and issue a Veto statement to any use of force mandate from the UN.

ROFL!!!!! In Orwell's 1984 you ought to be a servant in charge of rewriting history. Because if there is one thing that was decided for a long time (since summer 2002 actually) by the Bush administration, this was the Iraq war. Even the British had memos about this: http://www.juancole.com/2005/05/secret-british-mem o-shows-bush.html

So carry on your delusional propaganda. You needed a scapegoat for fuelling your blind war-mongering (the French), why not using the same scapegoat for explaining the post-war disaster.

Hundreds dead at a time?! Millions of homes destroyed?! Oh, no references? Strange... not.

Fine. The 1st 3 items that came up in a Google search. I suppose you find this even 'stranger' than when I didn't provide links:
http://english.people.com.cn/200204/12/eng20020412 _93947.shtml
http://www.juancole.com/2007/01/125-killed-hundred s-wounded-by.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Jenin
I suppose you have an excuse for each of these?

Can you give good references to any of your claims? At all?!

I have given the 1st 3 from a google search, though I suspect your head will remain firmly buried in the sand.

What a nitwit you are!

Oh shit. What can I say? Takes on to know one.

First you claimed that a democracy (Israel) is worth a thousand times more criticism than most any country (not other democracy) on the planet!

Israel is hardly a good example of a properly functioning democracy. You can't claim to have a democracy simply because there are elections. Take Iraq, for example. No-one in their right minds call this a democracy. Likewise, I reject the idea that the US or my home country, Australia, are democracies. You see, for democracy to work you need a couple of important requirements met:

- freedom of speech
In Israel, I believe anyone who criticises the Zionist agenda finds themselves in a very difficult situation indeed
Also, freedom of speech doesn't just mean the freedom to stand on the corner and say what I think ... it means equal access to the media. So if I have a political viewpoint that doesn't get covered in the media, and in fact only gets criticised, then that's hardly democratic, as people's opinions are very much shaped by the media. And in Israel, the media is very, very right-wing.

- independent country
In Israel's case, it doesn't really matter what political parties want to do, because they are 100% dependent on the US for aid ... in fact Israel is the biggest recipient of aid in the world. They also receive unbelievable gifts of weapons and ammunition from the US. So they are a US client state, not a democracy.

Then you make idiotic claims re Syria, one of the worst dictatorships in the world!

Look. What Syria does inside it's own borders is up to the Syrians. I don't by any means like what's going on there, but on the other hand I understand that the best people for changing Syria are Syrians ... not the US or UN or whatever. Now what Syria does outside it's borders is dwarfed incredibly by what Israel does outside it's own borders. In fact I say that Israel shouldn't have any borders at all ... it shouldn't exist. But keep in mind that when people are asked about the biggest threat to world peace, no-one says "Syria". Everyone says either the US or Israel. Syria doesn't even register.

Now you specifically claim that despite your insane claims about genocide etc done by democracies that you're not a useful idiot for the dictators?

Ah ... no I made no such claim. In fact I'm having trouble making that sentence make sense. If there is a point in there, try making it again.

Syria is one of the world's worst breakers of human rights and police states is worse than any democracy?

Well, as I said, what goes on inside Syria is really up to Syrians to fix. They are the only people that can liberate themselves from their own ruling class. But Israel's humans rights abuses against

The Slate review is talking about their 2004 study, not their new 2006 one.

IraqBodyCount raises good questions, but many have valid answers. For example, not everyone goes and gets a death certificate. Iraqi Muslims don't believe in embalming or open casket funerals days later. They believe that the body should be buried by sunset the day of death, in a plain wooden box. So there is no reason to expect them to take the body to the morgue. Although there are benefits to registering with the government for a death certificate, there are also disadvantages. Many families who have had someone killed believe that the government or the Americans were involved, and will have wanted to avoid drawing further attention to themselves by filling out state forms and giving their address. Juan Cole has more.

Iraqi blogger Riverbend says every family she knows has lost someone, so she feels the number is plausible.

Here's how well loved you are in Iraq imperialist scum bag:

"Millions of Iraqis believe that suicide attacks against British troops are justified, a secret military poll commissioned by senior officers has revealed.

The poll, undertaken for the Ministry of Defence and seen by The Sunday Telegraph, shows that up to 65 per cent of Iraqi citizens support attacks and fewer than one per cent think Allied military involvement is helping to improve security in their country.

It demonstrates for the first time the true strength of anti-Western feeling in Iraq after more than two and a half years of bloody occupation."

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/ne ws/2005/10/23/wirq23.xml

And even more Iraqis support the U.S. leaving peacefully and don't trust the U.S. occupiers:

"Four out of five Iraqis report holding a negative view of the U.S. occupation authority and of coalition forces, according to a new poll conducted for the occupation authority.

In the poll, 80 percent of the Iraqis questioned reported a lack of confidence in the Coalition Provisional Authority, and 82 percent said they disapprove of the U.S. and allied militaries in Iraq."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A224 03-2004May12.html

And that was in 2004 before the torture at Abu Gharaib had been revealed to the world, the numbers are no doubt worse now.

You aren't wanted you aren't needed, get gone already.

You sed: "None of my Marines would ever grab a civilian to hide behind while advancing on an enemy position. We would never kidnap the children of a family and threaten to kill the kids if the family didn't allow a weapons or bomb cache to be located in the house. And we sure as hell would never drive a carbomb into a crowd of kids hoping to kill as many of them as we could just so it would make the evening news."

No instead you bomb an ENTIRE CITY into rubble killing hundreds if not thousands and making life miserable for tens of thousands of people of now homeless people. You would then write off that great number of civilian dead as collateral damage.

"The video shows a good deal of the damage to the city (2/3s of buildings damaged) and has some graphic shots of the dead. At one point the health workers excavate a shallow grave with a body bag. They look inside and say "Atfal"-- "children." Someone had had to bury them hastily."

http://www.juancole.com/2005/06/fallujah-film-ital ian-magazine-diario.html

" * On 9 November, CNN Correspondent Karl Penhaul reported the use of cluster bombs in the offensive: "The sky over Falluja seems to explode as U.S. Marines launch their much-trumpeted ground assault. War planes drop cluster bombs on insurgent positions and artillery batteries fire smoke rounds to conceal a Marine advance."[17]
* November 10, 2004 reports by the Washington Post suggest that US armed forces used white phosphorus grenades and/or artillery shells, creating walls of fire in the city. Doctors working inside Fallujah report seeing melted corpses of suspected insurgents.[18] The use of WP ammunition was confirmed from various independent sources, including US troops who had suffered WP burns due to 'friendly fire'. On November 16, 2005 The Independent reported that Pentagon spokesman Lieutenant Colonel Barry Venable "disclosed that (white phosphorus) had been used to dislodge enemy fighters from entrenched positions in the city"..."We use them primarily as obscurants, for smokescreens or target marking in some cases. However it is an incendiary weapon and may be used against enemy combatants." [19] But a day before, Robert Tuttle the US ambassador to London denied that white phos

""Then when the Sacred Months have passed, then kill the Mushrikoon (idolaters, polytheists)...". (Quran 9:5)"

This verse is addressed to the Muslims of Medina under attack by the polytheist Meccans, and is referring to fighting them back. You're trying to take a 1400 year old battle and apply it to today in an incorrect manner. The Quran also forbids murder and says "if they make peace, you make peace." It also commands being fair to your neighbor, and that the closest in faith are Christians (5:82). The Quran also states that God commands peace as the default.

Next, lying is usually a tremendous sin in Islam. The only time you are permitted to lie is on the Battlefield as a trick or feint, or when someone asks you about your religion and you could be killed for saying you're a Muslim. Your source is incorrect (and amazingly biased), and is twisting the Prophet's (pbuh) quote, whose actual meaning was that lying is permissible in certain circumstances to preserve friendships or relationships (like telling your wife she doesn't look fat when she is)

Muslims are NOT silent when terrorism happens. Worldwide Muslim leaders condemn terrorism. Loudly. All the time. For example, my community mosque puts out condemnation emails every time something minor happens. Muslims condemn terrorism all the time, we're not to blame if CNN ignores these speeches that are given and reported in Muslim news sources.

I'm kinda tired of people accusing Muslims of being silent, when we're not. Let me give you a better example, the world thinks Americans are silent about Abu Ghraib. Where were the Americans protesting in the streets? The general feeling was disgust at the acts, but it wasn't reported and the world thinks Americans are as bad as Muslims.

""Then when the Sacred Months have passed, then kill the Mushrikoon (idolaters, polytheists)...". (Quran 9:5)"

This verse is addressed to the Muslims of Medina under attack by the polytheist Meccans, and is referring to fighting them back. You're trying to take a 1400 year old battle and apply it to today in an incorrect manner. The Quran also forbids murder and says "if they make peace, you make peace." It also commands being fair to your neighbor, and that the closest in faith are Christians (5:82). The Quran also states that God commands peace as the default.

Next, lying is usually a tremendous sin in Islam. The only time you are permitted to lie is on the Battlefield as a trick or feint, or when someone asks you about your religion and you could be killed for saying you're a Muslim. Your source is incorrect (and amazingly biased), and is twisting the Prophet's (pbuh) quote, whose actual meaning was that lying is permissible in certain circumstances to preserve friendships or relationships (like telling your wife she doesn't look fat when she is)

Muslims are NOT silent when terrorism happens. Worldwide Muslim leaders condemn terrorism. Loudly. All the time. For example, my community mosque puts out condemnation emails every time something minor happens. Muslims condemn terrorism all the time, we're not to blame if CNN ignores these speeches that are given and reported in Muslim news sources.

I'm kinda tired of people accusing Muslims of being silent, when we're not. Let me give you a better example, the world thinks Americans are silent about Abu Ghraib. Where were the Americans protesting in the streets? The general feeling was disgust at the acts, but it wasn't reported and the world thinks Americans are as bad as Muslims.

Well, you've stopped responding to me (or declined to answer this post, anyway), so I'm probably just wasting my time, but here goes:

It is also interesting that you soft-pedal the Iranian president's open and frequent demand for the annihilation of Israel as him merely claiming it is an "illegal nation"

The only thing "open and frequent" about this issue is the mis-translation in the press of Ahmadinejad's comments. Experts on Persian linguistics explain that the statement means a completely different thing than annihilation of Isreal. See this link for more detail. From the article:

The phrase he then used as I read it is "The Imam said that this regime occupying Jerusalem (een rezhim-e ishghalgar-e qods) must [vanish from] from the page of time (bayad az safheh-ye ruzgar mahv shavad)."

Ahmadinejad was not making a threat, he was quoting a saying of Khomeini and urging that pro-Palestinian activists in Iran not give up hope-- that the occupation of Jerusalem was no more a continued inevitability than had been the hegemony of the Shah's government.

Whatever this quotation from a decades-old speech of Khomeini may have meant, Ahmadinejad did not say that "Israel must be wiped off the map" with the implication that phrase has of Nazi-style extermination of a people. He said that the occupation regime over Jerusalem must be erased from the page of time.

Again, Ariel Sharon erased the occupation regime over Gaza from the page of time.

I should again underline that I personally despise everything Ahmadinejad stands for, not to mention the odious Khomeini, who had personal friends of mine killed so thoroughly that we have never recovered their bodies. Nor do I agree that the Israelis have no legitimate claim on any part of Jerusalem.

As you can see here, the man knows what he's talking about when he speaks of Persian-English translation.

So you see, the problem isn't that our friend DavidTC is "soft-pedaling" anything, it's that we're being systematically and routinely lied to. One has to make the effort to do some research and apply critical thinking to get to some semblance of the truth, but most of us are too lazy for that, preferring instead to whole-heartedly accept that which makes us feel the most comfortable within our pre-existing belief systems. Like I talked about before, ignorance and prejudice and fear are very comfortable together.

Well, you've stopped responding to me (or declined to answer this post, anyway), so I'm probably just wasting my time, but here goes:

It is also interesting that you soft-pedal the Iranian president's open and frequent demand for the annihilation of Israel as him merely claiming it is an "illegal nation"

The only thing "open and frequent" about this issue is the mis-translation in the press of Ahmadinejad's comments. Experts on Persian linguistics explain that the statement means a completely different thing than annihilation of Isreal. See this link for more detail. From the article:

The phrase he then used as I read it is "The Imam said that this regime occupying Jerusalem (een rezhim-e ishghalgar-e qods) must [vanish from] from the page of time (bayad az safheh-ye ruzgar mahv shavad)."

Ahmadinejad was not making a threat, he was quoting a saying of Khomeini and urging that pro-Palestinian activists in Iran not give up hope-- that the occupation of Jerusalem was no more a continued inevitability than had been the hegemony of the Shah's government.

Whatever this quotation from a decades-old speech of Khomeini may have meant, Ahmadinejad did not say that "Israel must be wiped off the map" with the implication that phrase has of Nazi-style extermination of a people. He said that the occupation regime over Jerusalem must be erased from the page of time.

Again, Ariel Sharon erased the occupation regime over Gaza from the page of time.

I should again underline that I personally despise everything Ahmadinejad stands for, not to mention the odious Khomeini, who had personal friends of mine killed so thoroughly that we have never recovered their bodies. Nor do I agree that the Israelis have no legitimate claim on any part of Jerusalem.

As you can see here, the man knows what he's talking about when he speaks of Persian-English translation.

So you see, the problem isn't that our friend DavidTC is "soft-pedaling" anything, it's that we're being systematically and routinely lied to. One has to make the effort to do some research and apply critical thinking to get to some semblance of the truth, but most of us are too lazy for that, preferring instead to whole-heartedly accept that which makes us feel the most comfortable within our pre-existing belief systems. Like I talked about before, ignorance and prejudice and fear are very comfortable together.

"There is no comparable threat to Iran (yeah, you might say the US, but the only thing Iran has to worry about from the US is caused directly by their nuclear weapon ambitions in the first place)."

Yeah, right. Tell that to Saddam Hussein.

I'm not going to bother digging out the links, but take a few minutes to google "petrodollar" and "petroeuro" and read up on it. Notice what happens to countries that consider selling oil for something other than dollars. Iraq--invasion on trumped up charges. Venezuela--attempted coup with US backing. Iran?

"the US maintains its stockpiles of nuclear weapons solely to serve as a deterrent against other nations, while Iran's leadership has publicly and repeatedly declared that Israel should not exist as a state and has funded terrorist acts in order to remove it - it may very well use nuclear weapons in a first-strike effort against Israel [...]"

Oh, "we've got that bomb and that is good 'cause we love peace and motherhood?"

Iran's Ayatollah Khameini has explicitly stated that using nuclear weapons is against Islamic rules. Believe him or not, but remember that the US has explicitly stated that "all options are on the table" and has not explicitly ruled out a nuclear first strike.

Well, one good thing, though. The United States of America has never funded terrorists. We fund "freedom fighters." Big difference.

"And for a third, Iran's government maintains a stranglehold over its people - the people are fairly Westernized as the region goes, and they are interested in legitimate democracy. [...] Finally, the stability of the US government is much greater than that of Iran. The chances of Iran's government collapsing at some point in the future, relegating their nuclear weapons to whoever can get their hands on them first, are significant."

Okay, okay. Now I'm a bit confused.

The reason the current leaders of Iran are in power is because of their stranglehold over their citizens. If it were up to their citizens, they'd throw the bums out and have a legitimate democracy. So, in other words, the biggest threat to "stability" in Iran is...the forces of democracy? And these people might get ahold of nuclear weapons?

If you haven't been hearing about the dozens of deaths reported per day, then I'm afraid you've been watching the American media (and why are they so lax about Iraqi deaths and report the American ones more?). Go read Al Jazeera or watch Mosaic TV. The death toll from the suicide bombing at a mosque has now reached 80, and there have been recent mass graves found of people killed this year, not to mention the dozens of Sunnis found executed or the dozens of Shia killed in a similiar fashion, or the outrage when the US bombed a Shia mosque. If you're finding it hard to keep up with these events, I'd recommend Informed Comment (voted best expert blog).

BTW, I don't necessarily agree with either of those points. I personally have a much more positive view of the situation in Iraq than most here. It is always crappy when people are dying. Just remember that fewer are dying now than under Saddam, and those that live may actually end up with a decent country. The amazing thing is the sacrifice the all-volunteer US military is making for what it believes in.

Uh, dead wrong.

War has never solved anything...except fascism, tyranny, oppression, slavery, and genocide. Think about it.

So you're saying war is the cause of, and the solution to, all of life's problems?

Then on the left we have people like Murtha and Kennedy screaming that we should leave, RIGHT NOW GODDAMNIT!!! That's just insane, we can't leave the Iraqis in a worse position than we found them. That would be like walking away from a car stuck underwater with a woman trapped inside. I mean, what kind of man does that?

The best argument I've seen for leaving is that staying only makes things worse. I have seen good defences of that opinion, but a quick search only gave http://www.juancole.com/2004/04/guest-commentary-r ay-close-on-real.html: a guest commentary in Juan Cole's blog, which is good but only touches this point.

More from the same blog.

For those who want more info on the polls see http://www.iraqanalysis.org/info/55. Note the first one by the UK's ministry of defence which shows that 65% of iraqis actually support attacks by insurgents on british troops. Also note the systematic bias in the IRI reports, which you can read about here.

You, sir, might find this article interesting:

http://www.juancole.com/2005/11/problem-with-frenc hness-readers-have.html

It is interesting to see (again) that when shit happens somewhere commentators abroad will always point to differences between us and them to explain why it happens to them and not to us. From a European perspective France is the closest to the US when it comes to how the state approaches integration.

The American notion that France is a European "multiculturalist" country and that that is an explanation of what happens, flatly contradicts the analysis given recently by the leader of the radical Arab-European League (AEL), Abou Jahjah, on Dutch television.

His take on it is that the Dutch/German/Scandinavian segregation model, which basically denies that non-Western immigrants really become equal to the natives by acquiring citizenship, actually works better for emancipating minorities and preventing riots because it at least gives second and third generation descendents of immigrants a clear identity: that of their parents and/or grandparents. It also creates discontent among ethnic minorities, but it will usually be voiced in more acceptable ways by the older and wiser leaders of the hierarchically organized ethnic community.

Comparing the American situation to Europe is also misguided. Most European countries are relatively monocultural and monoreligious, like France, with the exception of the Netherlands and Germany that have a protestant/catholic dividing line through the country.

Europe is adjacent to North Africa and the Middle East, and traditionally considers those areas as hostile. The vast majority of immigrants are uneducated, African, Muslim, and unemployable. Many immigrants never really chose to live in Europe for the rest of their lives, and initially left their family in the home country while they went to Europe to make money. Another category of early immigrants are former colonials, that sometimes takes historical griefs with them. Decolonization era immigrants are for instance often former native colonial soldiers that had to flee, and they strongly feel that they have a right to be treated as equals by the people they fought for.

The US has less immigration in absolute terms than continental Western Europe, a large part of the immigrants are from Western (Mexico) or Asian cultures, and South Americans are obviously Catholic. Muslim immigrants are better educated, and really decided to emigrate to the US. They were also able to afford a plane ticket.

The rioters who are burning cars and causing havoc are wrong, what they are doing is runing their cause, and strengthening their right-wing enemies. I was watching Fox News gleefully cover the events, both hating the French and deploring "foreign immigrants" while lecturing that the same thing could somehow happen to America. Baloney. The people who are doing this aren't educated and are going to cause their entire communities to suffer, not improve anything at all.

No, I don't like riots one bit. They're a bunch of vigilantes and fools, and are going to cause the government to crack down extremely badly on their communities and families. I'm with Juan Cole on this one.

http://www.juancole.com/2005/11/problem-with-frenc hness-readers-have.html

here in the US. The bigger problem is whether audiances and authorities really WANT to face the problems behind the pictures CNN can show us.

"When it comes to terror and devestation, actual terror and devestation, America is strictly in the little leagues."

Really, and how "actual" must terror be before you take it serious? Or does "actual" mean "We didnt do that"?
But, actually, the good ole US of A is right up there with Saddam:

http://www.juancole.com/2005/06/12000-dead-in-iraq i-guerrilla-war-rate.html

And, of course, youre forgetting the meager 50,000-300,000 deaths as a result of the Cambodia carpet bombing runs.

You disgust me.

VON.

The Imam says, a person who was really committed could change everything. He could save the Muslim Ummma from destruction.

The software is fatally one-sided. It also exaggerates. The Muslim world is not in danger of being destroyed, least of all by the United States, a warm friend of most Muslim countries.

MEMRI is selective and biased against the Arab press, and that it highlights pieces that cast Arabs, especially committed Muslims, in a negative light.

The organization cleverly cherry-picks the vast Arabic press, which serves 300 million people, for the most extreme and objectionable articles and editorials. It carefully does not translate the moderate articles. Juan Cole looked at newspapers that ran both tolerant and extremist opinion pieces on the same day, and checked MEMRI, to find that only the extremist one showed up. It would sort of be as though al-Jazeera published translations of Ann Coulter, Bill O'Reilly, Sean Hannity, Rush Limbaugh, and Jerry Falwell on Islam and the Middle East, but never published opinion piences on the subject by William Beeman or Dick Bulliet.

People who read MEMRI are being given an unbalanced view of the region as a result. In some instances the translations are not very good, but the main objection is the selectiveness of the material. MEMRI is one of a number of public relations campaigns essentially on behalf of the far rightwing Likud Party in Israel that tries to shape American perceptions of Muslims and the Middle East in a negative direction.

It would be just as easy to set up a translation service that zeroed in on racist and "Greater Israel" statements in the Hebrew Israeli press and made the articles available in English, while ignoring more liberal newspapers like Haaretz. If most educated Americans heard the raving against "ha-aravim" (the Arabs) that goes on among West Bank settlers, they'd be completely taken aback by the bigotted terms of reference. Much of such Likudnik discourse is not different in kind from what one hears from the Ku Klux Klan about minorities in this country.

If you talk to someone who ACTUALLY READS Arab Press (like Dar Al-Hayat or As-Sharq Al-Awsat, you're not going to find extremist imams in the mainstream, contrary to what MEMRI is tricking you into believing. (BTW, no imam is going to say "Allah needs warriors." Allah needs nobody.)

That's rich - mentioning Daniel Pipes - one of the biggest neoconservative, racist assholes involved.

Pipes is a Zionist asshole who wants Israel to rule the entire Middle East and probably either exterminate or enslave the remaining Arabs.

Try reading Juan Cole's blog if you want useful commentary on the Middle East and Pipes.

One of my favorite Juan Cole pieces talks about exactly that. It's about a year old but still apt: If America were Iraq, What would it be Like?

Sample quote:
"What would America look like if it were in Iraq's current situation? The population of the US is over 11 times that of Iraq, so a lot of statistics would have to be multiplied by that number.

Thus, violence killed 300 Iraqis last week, the equivalent proportionately of 3,300 Americans. What if 3,300 Americans had died in car bombings, grenade and rocket attacks, machine gun spray, and aerial bombardment in the last week? That is a number greater than the deaths on September 11, and if America were Iraq, it would be an ongoing, weekly or monthly toll."

The specialized niche blogs are excellent. I for instance read a lot of war and intelligence stuff. So Blogs like Global Guerillas, History of the Middle East & Religion, Counter-terrorist blog, Pentagons New Map blog, Terrorism Financing, Cryptome and Scheiner among a whole heap of others. The problem for me is I have to try keep away from Kos, Instapundit and LGF cause those type of blogs are partisan fuckwads that are more interested in bagging each other out and giving deceptive 'news' than giving realistic war analysis.

Alternately it's a good way to learn from people who know what they're talking about and want to share. There is a very capable Arabic speaking professor of history from U of Michigan who monitors the Arabic press and posts his findings online. That link goes to his site.

Both pieces of advice above were given by my professor. In contrast, Judy Woodruff, who is now visiting professor at my university, gave a public lecture where she said that in the future, blogs might be a threat to the current news paradigm, but she didn't know how. That's because she's not that bright despite her reputation. I don't know why anyone would use blogs as an important part of news gathering. Sounds like trend following to me. As I have tried to argue here, blogs are important, but only for specialized needs.

There can be a nice connection between blogs and the media; blogs aren't always op-eds and indy reporting. For example, Cursor.org could probably be defined as a blog (published daily, packed full of links, not done by a major organization, etc), but simply serves as a "media roundup", non-editorially collecting and summarizing underreported stories from various news agencies, organizations, and occasionally, other blogs.

Other blogs can compliment traditional media in other ways - for example, Juan Cole is a professor of history with a focus on the middle east, and often adds a lot of context and detail from foreign sources into events going on and what they mean within a historical context. The implications of, for example, the election in Lebanon are a lot meaningful when the history of the leaders and tribes involved in voting, and detailed descriptions of the voting system and how it has been used/manipulated in history are available.

Not all blogs are just "Looks like Bush really was AWOL!" or "It seems that Kerry's grades were worse than Bush's!" editorial-logs.

The seeping of blogistan into the pages of the Times of London with regard to its own scoops seems to me a bellwether of the kinds of changes that are being produced in our information environment by the blogging phenomenon. The gatekeepers at the New York Times and the Washington Post can no longer decide whether a leak is a story or a non-story. The public decides what a story is."

Let's point out the obvious too: the FEC was taking comments recently about whether or not to exempt bloggers from campaign finance laws. It became an issue because citizen media are getting too big to ignore.

Juan Cole was listed as a "B-list" blogger, but he should be on the A-list.

For the uninformed, Juan is a University of Michigan professor who collects information from various Arab Web sites and posts them in his blog. If you want to take a read at what's really happening in the Middle East, check out his blog http://www.juancole.com/.

He's definitely against the U.S. involvement in Iraq, so he's definitely biased. And I would prefer he stop some of the partisan crap that spews from both sides (his recent Photoshop pic of Cheney on a body-builders' body comes to mind), but the information he provides is well worth reading.

I think this whole blog thing is getting way out of hand. Who cares that much about someone else life? Most people can't even care for themselves...why should you be worrying about checking out the latest cell phone picture with a story about how the line at McDonalds is too long. Gimme a break.

You're reading the wrong blogs. Here's a few:

http://defensetech.org/
http://www.back-to-iraq.com/
http://www.armscontrolwonk.com/
http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/
http://www.juancole.com/
http://www.thewashingtonnote.com/
http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/

It means that CBS News and MSNBC get a heavy "trust" rating, while Juan Cole, tomflocco.com or Scoop.nz get "Le Shafte".

More coprorate sponsored media is not why I click. This is Google being used to "mainstream" the Internet as an information source - which is now a loose cannon in the world of controlled messages. Millions, just hearing about "'blogs on the Innernets" for the first time will now be safely served "more of the same" - while having alternative messages and analysis spun away with "low-trust".

Don't Be Evil, my ass.
You want the real truth on "trustworthy" news sources from Google? Search for "The Mighty Wurlitzer"+CIA or "Project Mockingbird".

How ironic. That entire post is unaccountable editorializing. The fact is, blogs provide an excellent filter for information. Most of it is tripe, but there are informed writer's such as Juan Cole's commentary on Iraq. The great thing (or bane, depending on your perspective) is that there are enough voices to get a reasonable sampling of public opinion. I don't think blogs will replace traditional journalism because someone still needs to report the information. However, you will see mainstream journalism looking to the Internet more frequently because specialty writers can still scoop them (see Bev Harris at Blackboxvoting). I could go on, but I'm late for class.

From my perspective, part of the problem that the American electorate finds itself in currently is that most journalists are pressed by time and deadlines - in addition to being lazy, intellectually dishonest, and unoriginal. Lies are repeated ad nauseum until they attain the polish of fact; lies, evasions or misrepresentations aren't confronted.

Bloggers aren't much better in this regard. Indeed, some myths or misunderstandings ("Al Gore claimed he invented the Internet") circulate longer on the Web than they do in mainstream media.

I think that blogs are useful for keeping attention on things: the costs of the war in Iraq, the veracity of the TANG memos. But they should not be mistaken for serious investigative journalism. Bloggers have even lower standards than journalists, if that's possible, and will rapidly jump to conclusions that a halfway decent journalist never would. (Almost every point raised by the conspiracy theorists over the TANG documents was quickly discredited. That is not to say that the combination of oddities and anachronisms in the memos wasn't worthy of attention, just that the bloggers were focussed on entirely the wrong things - such as trying to to determine kerning in a document that was a PDF of a photocopy of a photocopy of a photocopy).

Sites that specialise in getting hold of original source material, such as thememoryhole.org - are often worthwhile. Writers with an actual understanding of the situation on the ground, or academic qualifications, such as juancole.com, are also good. Otherwise, it is mostly rampant speculation and spin.

http://www.warblogging.com/: Excellent, thoughtful writing by George Paine.

http://www.juancole.com/: If you really want to understand the Iraq war and the Middle East.

http://www.atrios.blogspot.com/: Eschaton, for brief and very incisive commentary.

Informed Comment is Juan Cole's weblog.

I like Seeing the Forest.

Try Juan Cole's Informed Comment. His September 11 post was brilliant.

Try Juan Cole's Informed Comment. His September 11 post was brilliant.

I've become a fan of two blogs about the Middle East recently, and especially now that I've got RSS feeds figured out.

http://www.juancole.com/ , or Informed Comment, is an excellent commentary on the Middle East in general from a professor well versed in Arabic and Islamic studies. He's very good at explaining the deeper culture issues behind different events.

http://www.livejournal.com/~collounsbury/ is another enjoyable web log on the Middle East from the point of view of a Risk Analyst. While the author is very abrasive and does not suffer fools at all, one eventually gets used to and enjoys the style and information available.

Both of these are professional blogs, more focused on giving their own perspective on issues than really examining how the media presents them.

Oh, it's hard to narrow it down to a small list.

The previously mentioned Talking Points Memo is quite good.

Also see:

Washington Monthly (Kevin Drum, formerly of Calpundit)
Altercation (what liberal media?)
Daily Howler
Columbia Journalism Review de-spins the media.
Juan Cole (very insightful Iraq commentary from this professor of history)
White House Briefing (political round-up)