Whoops, There We Go Again

[bryant]

Well, a month of buildup later, and we're in Afghanistan.

The CNN coverage is, once more, surreal. On the left side of the screen, we have the CNN reporters in the area talking about what's going on; the right side of the screen is dominated by this pea soup looking stuff with sparkles that might or might not be explosions. But it's live pea soup; the infographic says so. Bush'll be speaking soon.

Meanwhile, someone clever has hacked the CNN.com Most Popular Links system. Right now, if you click on Most Popular from any CNN story, you'll see something about Britney Spears dying at the top. It's a hoax.

(Parenthetical: here's the direct link to Most Popular Links page. But if you click it your browser will get all resized.)

After poking around a little, it looks like the site itself wasn't hacked. The link used to email articles to people passes the URL of the article to email in the link itself; easy enough to construct a link that'll register a hit for any URL you want, which is what happened here. The Britney Spears article isn't located on CNN; rather, it's on ihatelinux.com.

Someone didn't want to hide their tracks, I guess. Heh. Yay whois.

Anyhow, I digress, but it's yet another reminder of the weakness of Internet news sources. See also the guys who wonked with Yahoo stories last month. I bet the guy who did it is kind of regretting his timing just now.

Ah, here's Bush. We're hitting training camps and military installations. I thought we learned last time that hitting terrorist camps isn't a win in and of itself, but the military installations are good. There's discussion of followup forces from other countries... yup, he's stopping short of saying we'll put troops on the ground but he's hinting. Just a hint, though. Y'all are gonna read the speech for yourselves, anyhow, rather than trusting my interpretation -- right?

I'd give him some bonus points if he apologized to the rest of the world for failing to realize how serious the terrorism problem was until the US got hit, but that's really just nitpicking on my part. It's not as if he could have gotten popular support for this sort of thing until 9-11.

Good speech. Taliban is reported to be moving troops towards the Uzbekistan border. If I were the Taliban, I would be working my ass off to make this as messy as possible; muddying the waters with former Soviet states is a good way to do that.

Comments

[foxmagic.livejournal.com]

What irks me the most is the pre-recorded statement from bin Laden, saying that America is filled with fear from north to south, from west to east, and that today's bombings are 'terrorist attacks' from the United States.

I know I couldn't have expected anything better... but I can only imagine just how much misinformation is being spread through Afghanistan about these attacks.

They're having demonstrations against America's 'war against Islam,' right? I guess they didn't see or didn't pay attention to Bush's speech where he upheld America's respect for Islam, and said this is all about a perversion of its teachings.

:-/

I wonder how long it'll be before the Taliban manages to put civilians under the American bombs, so that they can begin reporting numbers of innocent victims.

[agrimony.livejournal.com]

So far as the militant Islam is concerned (folks like the Taliban) they aren't perverting Islam. They have put a lot of effort into convincing themselves and those who follow them that they are simply doing what their religious texts have told them to do.

As such, I expect them to gloss over the bits of Bush calling them perverts. :)

[foxmagic.livejournal.com]

Actually, I have a feeling they (or at least their leaders) know full well how much they're perverting things; they just also know they have to keep up the appearance of being true to their cause, or else they'll lose what little support they have.

Bill Clinton knew full well that he was wrong, wrong, wrong in the whole Monica Lewinsky affair... and yet he got so good at looking innocent, at finding ways to look like he really plausibly meant to be truthful but gosh darn the people against him got him on a technicality, that he somehow managed to get through an impeachment without being kicked out of office.

Bill Gates of Microsoft kept breaking the law right and left, and thumbing his nose outright at the government -- but through it all he forcefully asserted his innocence, and twisted the truth by making up stories like 'we're getting picked on because we're so successful' and 'the government wants to control the tech industry,' and as a result he managed to get enough public support that right now he's still free to break the law, and there's no end in sight to the court proceedings.

The modern age is making it clear that people who lie, cheat, and steal are the ones who come out on top -- as long as they insist through it all that they're completely innocent!

Hm.

[bryant]

I dunno; I think bin Laden feels he has a real grievance against the US. We've all seen plenty of examples of rather unChristian behavior carried out by men who had the best and most devout of intentions. Regrettably, I don't have much trouble believing that bin Laden is more or less devout.

And there have been definite trigger events in his hatred of the US. Most notably, US troops basing out of Saudi Arabia during the Gulf War. Every indication is that he believes our presence in the Middle East profanes sacred soil.

One of the reasons I believe this is Usenet; I find it much easier to communicate on Usenet (or mailing lists) when I assume the person who just said something insane had a /reason/ for saying it. Very few people think of themselves as evil or malicious. We have to understand bin Laden, or we risk creating another one.

[janne.livejournal.com]

I bet the Taliban are saying the exact same thing, with the names reversed. Ie, that Bush's speech is the disinformation, while bin Laden's speech is the truth.

Me, I think they're both saying whatever they think will gain the most sympathy with their respective populations. Americans in general will be most responsive to a 'this isn't really a war' speech, while the militantly religious will be more convinced by an 'empire of evil' speech.

As always, the first casualty is truth.