THIS MODERN WORLD

Here. (Warning: graphic photo.)

We’ve heard a lot about how the American secret prison system is nothing at all like the Soviet gulag. Well, Chris Floyd points us toward this excerpt from Solzhenitsyn’s Gulag Archipelago describing KGB interrogation methods. No honest person can deny the shocking familiarity of many of the details. (Key word being “honest,” I suppose.) Take a minute, go read it. It’s rather stunning.

Heh. My previous post was awarded with a mention on CNN’s “Inside the Blogs” segment that perfectly sums up why reporting on blogosphere activity is such a stupid idea :

SCHECHNER:^[1] Now, we should also mention that now there’s outrage on the left because they say that Dick Durbin had nothing to apologize for and they’re mad at him for being weak on this issue. One of those doing a little parody^[2] is Greg over TheTalentShow.org. This is cross- posted at Tom Tomorrow’s This Modern World, and he basically parodies, with an analogy that has to do with a statement saying, if I read this to you and didn’t tell you it was a U.S. senator speaking, who would you think it was? So, a little play there, but they’re not happy on the left, now, with Dick Durbin. Ed?

Jeez, they’ve done a brilliant job squeezing all the funny out of my original post. Not that I expect them to quote the whole thing verbatim, but this mention was about as meaningful as saying “In the comedy world, Chris Rock has some interesting things to say about race relations noting that black people often do things one way while white people do the same things differently. Funny stuff, Ed?”

Seriously though, this whole “Inside the Blogs” business is ludicrous. The fact that a professional worldwide newsgathering organization is devoting any time to an unpublished amateur like me should be seen as the equivalent of waving a white flag. If the opinions of bloggers are so valuable, invite Glenn Reynolds and Duncan Black to co-host a “Capital Gang” type show or something. I’m grateful to reach a larger audience, but for a company with the staff, experience, resources, and reach of CNN to go trolling around the blogosphere looking for content to fill five minutes of airtime every day is just sad^[3]….

---

^{1 : The transcript notes that Schechner’s title is “blog reporter”. I’ve never been one of those people who thinks being a blogger makes me a journalist, but if paraphrasing what I said makes her a “reporter”, doesn’t that merit a de facto promotion of some sort? Perhaps “self-published columnist” or something.}

2 : Since the primary purpose of my original post was to make a political point and not just score a cheap laugh, I think the term “satire” is more appropriate here, but whatever…

3 : Especially when the rest of the day is spent on live press conferences with the family of a little boy who isn’t missing anymore or Larry King’s multiple interviews with psychics.

I don’t get too many freebies, but the best comp I ever received was a Sirius satellite radio. Especially now that I live outside of a major radio market, it’s really become indispensable. Having used it every day for well over a year now, I just felt like I should mention that.

Tom DeLay:

“You know, if Houston, Texas, was held to the same standard as Iraq is held to, nobody’d go to Houston, because all this reporting coming out of the local press in Houston is violence, murders, robberies, deaths on the highways,” DeLay said.

“And if you took that as the image of what is a great city that has an incredible quality of life and an incredible economy, it’s amazing to me. Go to Iraq. And see what’s actually happening there.

“Everybody that comes from Iraq is amazed at the difference of what they see on the ground and what they see on the television set.”

Iraqi blogger Riverbend:

The electrical situation differs from area to area. On some days, the electricity schedule is two hours of electricity, and then four hours of no electricity. On other days, it’s four hours of electricity to four or six hours of no electricity. The problem is that the last couple of weeks, we don’t have electricity in the mornings for some reason. Our local generator is off until almost 11 am, and the house generator allows for ceiling fans (or “pankas”), the refrigerator, television and a few other appliances. Air conditioners cannot be turned on and the heat is oppressive by 8 am these days.

Detentions and assassinations, along with intermittent electricity, have also been contributing to sleepless nights. We’re hearing about raids in many areas in the Karkh half of Baghdad in particular. On the television the talk about ‘terrorists’ being arrested, but there are dozens of people being rounded up for no particular reason. Almost every Iraqi family can give the name of a friend or relative who is in one of the many American prisons for no particular reason. They aren’t allowed to see lawyers or have visitors and stories of torture have become commonplace. Both Sunni and Shia clerics who are in opposition to the occupation are particularly prone to attacks by “Liwa il Theeb” or the special Iraqi forces Wolf Brigade. They are often tortured during interrogation and some of them are found dead.

There were also several explosions and road blocks today. It took the cousin an hour to get to work, which was only twenty minutes away before the war. Now, he has to navigate between closed streets, check points, and those delightful concrete barriers rising up everywhere. It is especially difficult to be caught in traffic and that happens a lot lately. Baghdad has been cut up into sections and several of them may be found to be off limits immediately after an explosion or before a Puppet meeting. The least pleasant situation is to be caught in mid-day traffic, on a crowded road, in the heat- waiting for the next bomb to go off.

What people find particularly frustrating is the fact that while Baghdad seems to be falling apart in so many ways with roads broken and pitted, buildings blasted and burnt out and residential areas often swimming in sewage, the Green Zone is flourishing. The walls surrounding restricted areas housing Americans and Puppets have gotten higher- as if vying with the tallest of date palms for height. The concrete reinforcements and road blocks designed to slow and impede traffic are now a part of everyday scenery- the road, the trees, the shops, the earth, the sky… and the ugly concrete slabs sometimes wound insidiously with barbed wire.

The price of building materials has gone up unbelievably, in spite of the fact that major reconstruction has not yet begun. I assumed it was because so much of the concrete and other building materials was going to reinforce the restricted areas. A friend who recently got involved working with an Iraqi subcontractor who takes projects inside of the Green Zone explained that it was more than that. The Green Zone, he told us, is a city in itself. He came back awed, and more than a little bit upset. He talked of designs and plans being made for everything from the future US Embassy and the housing complex that will surround it, to restaurants, shops, fitness centers, gasoline stations, constant electricity and water- a virtual country inside of a country with its own rules, regulations and government. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the Republic of the Green Zone, also known as the Green Republic.

Yep. Sounds just like Houston.