Clash of civilizations The seminal analysis of the fault lines of the new world order. Huntingdon's 1993 article, in Foreign Affairs, was the first to posit that the cold war conflict would be superseded by rivalry between the west, Confucian China, and Islam. "The Muslims are convinced of the superiority of their culture, and obsessed with the inferiority of their power." Foreign Affairs has opened up its archive on the web. Also, a related article in Prospect Magazine by Anatole Lieven. It ties the twin towers attack to the Muslim world's repeated humiliation, and does so in a way that does not excuse the massacre. Good prescriptions too, including retribution, alliance with Russian and Iran, and restraint of Israel. Compulsory reading. Foreign Affairs Magazine: Special Briefing Samuel Huntingdon: The Clash of Civilisations Prospect: Anatole Lieven#
Lapdancers, or F-16s I am beginning to think that the west's greatest armaments - gyms, lapdancing and general decadence - may be of limited use in the coming conflict. Let me explain. I have always believed that the west need not fight wars; that history is on our side; that the allure of Hollywood, holidays in Ibiza, gleaming cars, barbeques on a well-watered lawn, that glorious capitalism can soften any radical nationalism, or fanatical religious belief; that sooner or later, they will all come around to the western way. Detente did more than Star Wars to bring down the Soviet bloc; as soon as travel and communication were relaxed sufficiently for east Europeans to see how far they had been left behind, the economic case for communist government crumbled, peacefully. Vietnam turned capitalist, and would have much earlier had the US just let events take their course. Call it zen capitalism: surrender, and win. And this is why I am worried now. The Arab terrorists who attacked the twin towers and the Pentagon had tasted the west. Some had spent years in Germany and other western countries, and spoke proficient English. At least one had an engineering degree. And, most disturbing of all: they, or their sympathizers, buffed up at high-end fitness gyms, and relaxed with lapdancers [see below]. Why disturbing? Because the militants tasted the west - wealth, safety, education, vanity, sex - and resisted. And, if seduction does not work, destruction may be the only answer. Suspected Terrorists Worked Out In Local Gyms AP: lapdancing BBC: Bin Laden's middle class killers Washington Post: Heineken, adult video stores, Chinese takeaways Agents of terror leave their mark on Sin City / Las Vegas workers recall the men they can't forget#
Friday, September 21
Blaming the victim I have been outraged less by the attack on the twin towers than the self-hating liberal western apology for the actions of Islamic radicals. After all, the suicide bombers were at least true to their cause. From the start, it was ludicrous to call them cowards. It was an audacious attack which may well serve their purpose: humble the west, radicalize the moslem world, and sharpen the clash between civilizations. For deeply suicidal behavior, look no further than the woolly-thinking western liberals who have rushed to blame the west for its own suffering. Islamic radicals see no division between church and state, hate gays and subjugate women, and extinguish dissent. They despise every liberal value, and it is extraordinary that any liberal would expend more energy in understanding Islamic radicals' motives than in defending the liberal cause. Love thine enemy is a fine motto; understand thine enemy is a fine policy; but some of the woolly-thinkers are taking sympathy to the point of self-hatred, and self-hatred to the point of political suicide. Some context: first the column in the Guardian that first set me off on this rant; then Amos Brown, the Bay Area politician who used a memorial service for one of the victims of last week's attacks to blame US policy; and a couple of excellent retorts, one from Christopher Hitchens, a real liberal, the other from The Economist. A taster, from Hitchens: "Loose talk about chickens coming home to roost is the moral equivalent of the hateful garbage emitted by Falwell and Robertson, and exhibits about the same intellectual content. Indiscriminate murder is not a judgment, even obliquely, on the victims or their way of life, or ours." Guardian: They can't see why they're hated SF Chronicle: Heaping insult onto injury Economist: The roots of hatred Christopher Hitchens: Let's not get too liberal#
Zeitgeist Some strange pattterns in internet search terms, and purchasing patterns. Nostradamus still top of the Lycos top 50 search terms. More interestingly, people began searching for Nostradamus immediately after the attacks on the twin towers, according to Google's zeitgeist statistics. Well before the email hoax became widespread. People are also looking for information on "american flag" - where to buy one, I presume. And, interestingly, Cantor Fitzgerald, the securities firm that was devastated by the attack, made the Lycos top 50.
Russians warn of Afghanistan’s perils Alexander Lebed, general-turned-politician, remembers Russia's own war in Afghanistan: "For every town annihilated, perhaps one mujaheddin was killed. The rest were innocent. The survivors hated us and lived with only one idea — revenge. They are wolves, these people.”#
Reconstruction of the twin towers Sent by a friend, an image of the proposed reconstruction of the twin towers as a light structure. Supposedly the front cover of the coming issue of New York Magazine. A counterpoint to the black on black image of the buildings on the New Yorker.#
Tuesday, September 18
Transparent New York A beautiful interactive map of Manhattan, and its development, from Skyscraper.com. Click the 1965-75 button to see the Twin Towers go up.#
Richard Dawkins, fanatical atheist, on religious fanatics "Given that they are certainly going to die, couldn't we sucker them into believing that they are going to come to life again afterwards? Yes, testosterone-sodden young men too unattractive to get a woman in this world might be desperate enough to go for 72 private virgins in the next."#
Urban Legends: Did Famed Seer Nostradamus Predict the World Trade Center Attack? In these crazy times, some normally rational friends of mine have described the uncanny echoes between the attack on New York and some of the prophesies of Nostradamus. Under the surface, we're all so superstitious. I usually snort, but the ever-useful urban legends site has debunked this modern-day Nostradamus myth.#
Bin Laden 'share gains' probe If true, genius. Trading on insider knowledge of impending terrorist attacks. Of course the US government could also make a killing, so to speak. How about buying up stocks of heroin ahead of the attack on Afghanistan, source of much of the world's supply of the drug.#
The New Yorker: The Talk of the Town Rebecca Mead - the New Yorker's resident weblog correspondent since she wrote You've Got Blog - writes on the aftermath of the New York attack.#
Friday, September 14
Rising to the occasion I know now is the time for everyone to rally round, but something's on my mind, and has to be said. George Bush just won't be able to rise to the occasion. The text of his first address, on Tuesday evening, was precise, sometimes elegant. But it was written for him. And whenever he has gone off script, he has ground to a halt. Bush may have the resolve, the managerial ability, but he does not have the words. He says the US is going to "whip" terrorism, as if he were a coach talking about an opposing football team. Bush is going after "those folks" that mounted the attack; he's a local politician who has not yet developed a statesman's vocabulary. I'm sorry, his red-eyed emotion seems childish rather than moving. What is more, everyone knows it. "New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani, from a family of Italian immigrants and a law-and-order Republican in the loosest Great City on Earth, now stands as our national leader in the wake of this repulsive attack," writes Ken Layne. I don't see Bush getting the appreciation that Giuliani is getting in New York. I wonder when people will remember, nostalgically, the soaring prose of Bill Clinton after the Oklahoma bombings. Bush's staff, relieved at his performance on Friday at the disaster site in New York, said he was at his best in informal settings. That is the spin of aides who know Bush is not at his best when being presidential, which is a formal activity. Out of solidarity, few will say this: but the truth is that Bush just isn't up to the job. He's like a poor speaker at a wedding: everyone wants him to succeed, but we expect embarrassment. For inspiration, we'll have to turn to Rudy's calm, or the columnists who have reminded me why I, a European, love America so much. Miami Herald: We'll go forward from this moment Slate: Bush Is No Giuliani; He Shouldn't Even Try#
Ethnolinguistic groups in Afghanistan "Afghanistan’s population, estimated to be about 25 million, is a volatile mixture of ethnic groups: about 38 percent Pashtun, 25 percent Tajik, 6 percent Uzbek, 19 percent Hazara, along with small numbers of Aimaks, Turkmen and Baloch." · Assumption 1. The Taliban regime will delay the extradition of Osama Bin-Laden long enough to give the US the pretext to attack Afghanistan. · Assumption 2. The US will attack with cruise missiles and manned aircraft over Pakistan, and will follow up by sending special forces against Taliban centers and Bin-Laden training camps, in so far as these can be identified. · Assumption 3. These attacks will be frustratingly ineffective. You can't bomb a country into the stone age if it is already in the stone age. · Assumption 4. Despite the strength of US public feeling, there is no sustained appetite for a large-scale ground invasion of Afghanistan, and occupation of the country. · Proposal: realpolitik. After the initial attack, the US should encourage the dismemberment of Afghanistan. The country is ethnically mixed. It really shouldn't be a country at all. [See map.] Give slices of the north to Turkmenistan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan. Give a statelet in the northeast to the Lion of Kabul, assuming he's still alive. One could even let Iran, now a relatively moderate force in the Middle East, take the west. Arm them all. On the existing flames of ethnic and clan rivalry in Afghanistan, pour more flames. · The cons. While the initial attack need not cause many Afghan civilian casualties, the heightened civil war that follows would. Western policymakers would share in responsibility for the continued conflict, as they share in responsibility for the decades-long Afghan civil war. · The pros. The West can set an example: any haven for terrorism will be dismantled; its leaders will have no state. And most of the blood will be on someone else's hands. Related link: International Herald Tribune on new US foreign policy.#
Jeff Jarvis in NJ.com: an eyewitness account We will all discover friends, or friends of friends, or friends of friends of friends, who died or were injured in New York. Jeff Jarvis, one of the investors in Moreover Technologies, was at the station under the World Trade Center towers when the aircraft hit. He was as close to the disaster as anyone I know. Yet.#
kottke.org Some of the best roundups of the attack on New York, not from CNN and MSNBC, but from weblog authors. In this, Jason Kottke's site, no original reporting, but an eclectic collection of commentary and linked articles, photos, and online payment forms. Recommended.#
Guardian: They can't see why they are hated "Nearly two days after the horrific suicide attacks on civilian workers in New York and Washington, it has become painfully clear that most Americans simply don't get it." I don't often get offended. In fact, I despise people who do get offended. But this column in the UK's Guardian newspaper is inappopriate, poorly judged... No, you know what, forget those mealy-mouthed words: it's putrid. Feel free to send further adjectives to Seamus Milne - the columnist. I defend his right to express himself, and mine to despise him. Email s.milne@guardian.co.uk.#
Thursday, September 13
The New Republic: How to Fight by Eliot A. Cohen A quote from 100 years ago. "The United States is like a gigantic boiler. Once the fire is lighted under it there is no limit to the power it can generate."#
We will win this war "No war-crime trials in The Hague, no lawyers, no extradition negotiations. Just death." I think Ken Layne will think better of this Deathwish vigilantism after a couple of days. But he has captured the essence and the brilliance of America in a way that can't be easily improved upon. Read this.#
Sunday, September 9
Interpolated rotoscoping One way to shoot movies on digital, and sidestep the image quality issue: manipulate the film in post-production. An extreme example: "Waking Life", a star of this year's Sundance Festival, which was shot on digital, and then manipulated by animators using a technique called interpolated rotoscoping, and software dubbed Rotoshop.#
Exotic ethernet We've all dreamed about working from the beach. And I don't mean any beach; I mean some tropical island, in the middle of nowhere, from a hut which just happens to have ethernet sockets embedded discreetly behind the rattan matting, and a blazingly fast connection to the ugly world's internet. It's nearly doable. I'm planning a few days of leisurely work with my laptop in an ancient Ligurian village with very modern wiring. I'll fire up my IM and gleefully describe the view from the terrace to friends stuck in chilly London and San Francisco. For when it gets colder, I'm researching various other more exotic locations. Additional suggestions please. Colletta, Italy Venice, Los Angeles Singapore Hawaii Milan, Italy Barbados, Caribbean Fernie, British Columbia Olympic Valley, California Las Vegas, Nevada Santa Barbara, California New York, New York please email me any other ideas#
Wednesday, September 5
Gonzo marketing Christopher Locke, the author of this and one of the strongest contributors to the Cluetrain Manifesto, in a Q&A. "By the first day the book [Cluetrain] started selling, it was already a bestseller. And that was before the publishing company could even run ads in the Wall Street Journal and The New York Times, and put billboards in airports and stuff, but it was a net effect that made that book a bestseller."#
Tuesday, September 4
Waiter, Hold the Fois Gras: Slump Hits New York Dining "The napkin index has seen a drop of 5.6 percent since the beginning of the year, mostly in the last three months. At DeBragga & Spitler, suppliers of top-quality meats, Marc Sarrazin, the owner, says business is down 7 to 8 percent." Anyone still thinking that this downturn will be contained in the technology sector? First tech, then finance, now services. And - sorry to be gloomy - more dominos still to fall.#
Electronic Game Maker Lets Kids Do Their Marketing for Them "Early this year, market researchers headed into playgrounds, skate parks and video arcades throughout Chicago looking for what they called alpha pups." Someone - in this case the marketers of a computer game called Pox - has been reading The Tipping Point. In that book, an anecdotally rich tale of viral marketing by Malcolm Gladwell, the revival of Hush Puppies is attributed to a few trend-setting adults in the East Village. To build a fad for Pox, the marketers in this New York Times story picked the coolest third-grade schoolkids they could find, and seeded them with the handheld computer game. Many more campaigns like this and consumers will become as wary of viral marketing as they are tired of traditional advertising. [New York Times Magazine]#
Monday, September 3
The ultimate network I'm dreaming of the ultimate home-office network. PCs, laptops, printers, scanners, cameras, and any other gizmo I can think of - all connected to the internet via an ethernet network. If possible, by wireless ethernet. Here's my shopping list, but please email me with additional suggestions. Who knows? One day, if I have nothing better to do, I may actually put all this together. router printer scanner sub-notebook stereo video recorder cordless phone phone switch surveillance camera#
DivX 4.01 Codec Download this codec alone, rather than DivX Network's Playa client software. The codec works with Windows Media Player to bring compressed high-quality video to the PC screen. Without having to worry about yet another application.#
Saturday, September 1
Werewolf The version of this game I've played is simpler, and called Mafia. But this is the most fun you can have without rules that take days to learn. Highly political. But the most obviously political get killed the quickest. Like life, really. Via Blogdex.#
Lapdancers, or F-16s
"Loose talk about chickens coming home to roost is the moral equivalent of the hateful garbage emitted by Falwell and Robertson, and exhibits about the same intellectual content. Indiscriminate murder is not a judgment, even obliquely, on the victims or their way of life, or ours."![](http://www.google.com/press/zeitgeist/nostradamus_graph_sm.gif")
