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Biggest kid on the block

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It’s certainly a fine thing that the U.S. government is finally rewriting its global political and military strategy to take into account the fact that the Cold War is over. (The document’s full text is here.)

There are some things to applaud in this document. But David Sanger’s Times story highlights this statement: “The president has no intention of allowing any foreign power to catch up with the huge lead the United States has opened since the fall of the Soviet Union more than a decade ago.”

Flash forward to 100 or 500 years from now, when some future Edward Gibbon is composing his massive “Decline and Fall of the American Empire,” and marks this moment as the zenith of American power, and the start of its downfall. Our leaders seem to be committing themselves at once to a military policy that brooks no challenge and commits us to outspend any challenger — and to an economic policy that inequitably but massively cuts government revenue. This is how empires are unmade.

Know thine enemy

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In Slate, Michael Kinsley makes a cogent, and characteristically pragmatic, argument against Bush’s war-on-terrorism rhetoric. If you just keep repeating that your enemy is “evil,” and don’t explore his motivations, you’re going to do a lousy job of preventing other enemies from proliferating.

Meanwhile, in Salon Premium, Josh Marshall explores the quandary Bush administration hawks find themselves in now that the president has chosen to work through the U.N. and its resolutions. Latest twist: Rewrite Bush’s speech. “Maybe the president said that the issue was making Saddam live up to the resolutions, but in fact whether he does or not is really beside the point, because the real point is that Saddam can’t be trusted and must be ousted.”

Oh dear, what can the anti-matter be?

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Enough about Bob Greene already! What’s really important? Researchers at CERN — the Swiss physics lab that birthed the World Wide Web a dozen years ago — have “made 50,000 atoms of anti-hydrogen, the antimatter counterpart of normal hydrogen.” Read more here. (Link courtesy David Harris.) This “blob” is apparently enough anti-matter for scientists to test the entire basis of modern physics: “If antihydrogen does not behave as they expect, the model will need to be replaced, and our notions of the structure of the Universe overhauled.”

What do we root for? Do we keep our fingers crossed that the standard model holds? Or do we root for the world to be turned upside down?

NYTimes coverage is here.

Salon Blog watch

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This is how we wanted it to be! Leslie Blanton describes ending up blogging “by accident”: “I had been up examining Salon’s weblogs, and started one kinda by accident. Thought I’d see how hard it would be to download the free software. Now here I am minutes later, crafting my first posting.”
Kriselda of Different Strings critiques that company that’s renting Bowdlerized Hollywood movies: “I have to wonder how they would feel if someone took a good, wholesome, family-oriented movie, and, in order to fit in with their desire to see more sex and violence, added scenes of shoot-outs and orgies to it, and then rented it to whomever. I doubt many people would be willing to agree that they have a right to make such changes, and there’d certainly be an outcry over the ‘degredation’ of these clean-cut films.”
Michel Vuijlsteke is climbing up the rankings, thanks it seems to some flurry of interest in
one Veronique de Cock’s chest. Which isn’t to say that this bilingual blog doesn’t deserve as much traffic as it gets.

Weblog panel links

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For the sake of attendees at tonight’s panel at the Berkeley Journalism School, and anyone else interested, I’m posting some links to previous Salon articles on the subject — because I’ve sort of said my piece on the subject of “blogging and journalists” already:

Much Ado About Blogging (May 10, 2002): Is it the end of journalism as we know it? Or just 6 zillion writers in search of an editor? Key points: Typically, the debate about blogs today is framed as a duel to the death between old and new journalism. Many bloggers see themselves as a Web-borne vanguard, striking blows for truth- telling authenticity against the media-monopoly empire. Many newsroom journalists see bloggers as wannabe amateurs badly in need of some skills and some editors. This debate is stupidly reductive… The professional journalist can still accomplish things that, so far at least, no blogger has managed…. But blogs can do some things the pros can’t…. The editorial process of the blogs takes place between and among bloggers, in public, in real time, with fully annotated cross-links. This carries pluses and minuses: At worst, it creates a lot of excess verbiage that only the most fanatically interested reader would want to wade through. At best, it creates a dramatic and dynamic exchange of information and ideas.Is there any doubt that, on balance, we come out ahead?
Fear of Links (May 28, 1999): While professional journalists turn up their noses, weblog pioneers invent a new, personal way to organize the Web’s chaos. Key points: On the Web, with its unspannable abundance of chaotic and ill-organized information, pointing people to good links is a fundamental service — a combination of giving directions to strangers and sharing one’s discoveries with friends. All of which explains why a phenomenon known as the weblog is one of the fastest-growing and most fertile creative areas on the Web today… Weblogs, typically, are personal Web sites operated by individuals who compile chronological lists of links to stuff that interests them, interspersed with information, editorializing and personal asides. A good weblog is updated often, in a kind of real-time improvisation, with pointers to interesting events, pages, stories and happenings elsewhere on the Web. New stuff piles on top of the page; older stuff sinks to the bottom.
Baring Your Soul to the Web (July 3, 1998): This was a Salon cover story by Simon Firth about the pre-blog phenomenon of Web diaries — an art that, interestingly, some leading practitioners felt in 1998 was already “over,” done, tired. Provides a little perspective on the cyclical nature of enthusiasm for Web innovation, and on the way we keep reinventing the wheel every couple of years — but with better tools, dammit!

Say it ain’t so, Saddam

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Borowitz Report: “IRAQ AGREES TO WEAPONS INSPECTIONS; CHENEY BEGS THEM TO RECONSIDER.” Choice quote: “‘The Vice President is an optimistic man,’ the aide said. ‘This is a bump in the road, but he is still hopeful that Saddam will change his mind and refuse to allow weapons inspectors to return to Iraq.'”

Enron and Thomas White, cont’d

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Paul Krugman’s column for Tuesday takes former Enron honcho and current army secretary Thomas White to task, referring to Jason Leopold’s groundbreaking reporting in Salon about White’s dubious-at-best role in padding Enron’s profits at a critical time in the company’s downward spiral.

Choice quote:

  Mr. Cheney supposedly chose Thomas White for his business expertise. But when it became apparent that the Enron division he ran was a money-losing fraud, the story changed. We were told that Mr. White was an amiable guy who had no idea what was actually going on, that his colleagues referred to him behind his back as “Mr. Magoo.” Just the man to run the Army in a two-front Middle Eastern war, right?

Or, as I put it in July, “Army secretary Thomas White is a former Enron official who either (A) knew what was happening at that company and therefore shares responsibility in its ignominy or (B) was completely in the dark about Enron’s escapades. A he’s a crook, B he’s a boob…”

ONA nominations

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The Online Journalism Awards nominations have just been announced, and we’re proud that Salon is a finalist in three different categories: for “General Excellence / Independent” (that’s us); for Jake Tapper’s great Enron reporting; and for Asra Nomani’s feature writing from Central Asia last year after 9/11. Lots of other high-quality nominations as well.

Inspector or general?

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Saddam Hussein has apparently told the U.N. that he will “unconditionally” accept weapons inspectors back into Iraq.

The Bush administration is already saying it will not take him at face value, which seems sensible given his track record. But meanwhile I’m sure the gears at the U.N. are turning. Either this inspection mission will happen (doubtful but possible) or the administration hawks who’ve warned that Saddam will just use new inspections to procrastinate and confuse the situations will be proven right. Either way, it’s an important and necessary development.

This entire sequence of events is one that, critics of the administration have long insisted, needed to happen before the U.S. begins any military action aimed at “regime change.” The Cheney/Rumsfeld “go it alone” axis seemed to balk at that need all summer. But they have not prevailed — as Josh Marshall keeps pointing out.

If we go to war, let it be in concert with a community of nations whom Saddam Hussein has collectively resisted, not in isolation as an act of imperial prerogative. Let it be a last resort of regrettable necessity, not a first resort of convenience.

Better yet, let’s achieve our goals without ever needing to launch an invasion or start another war. That’s what diplomacy is all about, and that’s why we have a United Nations. And it can happen — unless Bush and his team are so determined to have a war that they keep raising the goalposts.