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For people in other countries to be able to click on a blog like Iraq the Model and read the actual thoughts of an Iraqi today, is unprecedented.
I came back to Baghdad yesterday, this time our visit was different from the previous ones, this time we had to visit suburbs, villages and small towns around the center a Basra, (some are even far) like the small town that I’ll be working in.The situation there is quite different from what we saw (and described) in the center of Basra; the streets are all mud, the water supplies are insufficient (in quality and quantity)so that some people depend on the river to get water.
The sewage system is incomplete, garbage is everywhere, communications are difficult, the people are simple and peaceful but are really poor, the whole town looked like ruins. In other words; people there are still living in the 18th. Century.
These areas seemed to be suffering from neglect for decades, and one would think that the government might be unaware of the presence of this town, but this is not true. Those towns and villages were not only isolated from the rest of the world , but from the rest of Iraq as well.
Those people were being abandoned (on purpose) and punished by orders of the dictator, and this applies also to many other areas all over Iraq.
Also from this blog:
Snap shots from Iraq.:: the terrorists tried to disturb the normal function of schools and distributed letters carrying the signature of terror, and planted their bombs here and there but, kids love to school was stronger than that.
:: the new year eve explosion in one of Baghdad’s restaurants proves that the terrorists hate to see people happy and joyful, even those for whom happiness was forbidden for decades….
:: the old currency almost disappeared from exchange in the local markets with no considerable complications. ...
:: an Iraqi citizen offers to establish a school for TIKE WON DO in Basra, and pays the expenses for sending the Iraqi national team to the world championship.
The sense that we all belong to this land is growing after it was owned by a group of criminals and thieves.
So the changeover to new currency took place with little or no complications. I haven’t seen that covered by the major media yet.
I like the blog Iraq at a Glance too; however, it seems to be down at the moment.
Jeff Jarvis covers the Iraqi weblogs in detail. In his blogroll, scroll to the section titled “B-Roll: Middle East” for more Iraqi weblogs.
Update: Iraq at a Glance is back up. Read it and see how he’s rejoicing in the new Iraq. Hey, maybe they ought to rename the country New Iraq.
It’s like this. A lot of video games have the ability to record and play back what you do in the game. So people use the characters in the game, to play parts. The game provides the cool visuals to support the story, character, and dialogue that are brought in with the script.
Tapping into the same programming DNA of such blockbuster game franchises as “Quake,” “Unreal Tournament,” or “Halo,” die-hard gamers-cum-upstart filmmakers have been making 3-D animated movies with nothing more than a game console or a PC. Machinima artists take preexisting visual elements of a game (character, set, props), change the way they look, control how they move, record the results and edit them into a narrative.
I had a look at one such film, Red vs. Blue—and it’s really funny.
Via GeekPress, here’s an excerpt from a speech made by Michael Crichton in which he argues that Environmentalism is now a religion:
I studied anthropology in college, and one of the things I learned was that certain human social structures always reappear. They can’t be eliminated from society. One of those structures is religion. Today it is said we live in a secular society in which many people—the best people, the most enlightened people—do not believe in any religion. But I think that you cannot eliminate religion from the psyche of mankind. If you suppress it in one form, it merely re-emerges in another form. You can not believe in God, but you still have to believe in something that gives meaning to your life, and shapes your sense of the world. Such a belief is religious. ...
Today, one of the most powerful religions in the Western World is environmentalism. Environmentalism seems to be the religion of choice for urban atheists. Why do I say it’s a religion? Well, just look at the beliefs. If you look carefully, you see that environmentalism is in fact a perfect 21st century remapping of traditional Judeo-Christian beliefs and myths.
There’s an initial Eden, a paradise, a state of grace and unity with nature, there’s a fall from grace into a state of pollution as a result of eating from the tree of knowledge, and as a result of our actions there is a judgment day coming for us all. We are all energy sinners, doomed to die, unless we seek salvation, which is now called sustainability. Sustainability is salvation in the church of the environment. Just as organic food is its communion, that pesticide-free wafer that the right people with the right beliefs, imbibe.
Eden, the fall of man, the loss of grace, the coming doomsday—-these are deeply held mythic structures. They are profoundly conservative beliefs. They may even be hard-wired in the brain, for all I know. I certainly don’t want to talk anybody out of them, as I don’t want to talk anybody out of a belief that Jesus Christ is the son of God who rose from the dead. But the reason I don’t want to talk anybody out of these beliefs is that I know that I can’t talk anybody out of them. These are not facts that can be argued. These are issues of faith.
And so it is, sadly, with environmentalism. Increasingly it seems facts aren’t necessary, because the tenets of environmentalism are all about belief. It’s about whether you are going to be a sinner, or saved. Whether you are going to be one of the people on the side of salvation, or on the side of doom. Whether you are going to be one of us, or one of them.
The speech contains surprising information on the environment. Read the whole thing.
The point I’d like to make is that the same argument can be applied to today’s left, which demonstrates over and over again, not just a disdain for, but a blindness to the facts.
Lileks, in one of the articles that inspired this post, finds that the arguments of the left are utterly out of keeping with the facts: “It’s like discussing the Apollo program with people who think it was all faked.”
Per Victor Davis Hanson:
Thus by any comparative standard of military history, the last two difficult years, despite setbacks and disappointments, represent a remarkable military achievement. Yet no one would ever gather even the slightest acknowledgment of such success from our Democratic grandees.
The examples are endless. A few more will suffice:
Steven Den Beste discusses the “laughable and unconvincing” arguments against the Iraq War, as does Steyn Online.
Hawken mentions how critics of Bush’s economic policy ignore that the economy is taking off.
Dean’s blindness to the facts is observed by InsultsUnpunished. Via Tim Blair, even James Carville says Dean appars to have “undergone some kind of a political lobotomy”.
Patterico itemizes how hard the LA TIMES works to hide massive quantities of facts that oppose the position of the left.
Larry Elder talks about a self-described “radical socialist” who didn’t appreciate that the very store she was shopping in at the time would be impossible under socialism.
In a previous post I’ve mentioned how preposterous it is for the left to claim Hussein had no ties to terrorism.
Within the past few days I personally heard educated people saying that “Bush is a mass murderer” due to his actions in Iraq – ignoring the fact that Hussein was the mass murderer, killing 50,000 to 60,000 Iraqis a year – Iraqis who have been saved by Bush.
Clearly the left is blind to the facts. Their devotion is to their faith, and they refuse to see any truth that opposes it. They are, therefore, a religion.
Could this explain why the left is trying to ban Christianity? Is it possible that they see Christianity as a competing religion?
This observation is up at the excellent ReasonOnline site:
Still, even the most imaginatively fearful can’t help but notice that if our nation is indeed crawling with al Queda sleeper agents with the desire and ability to pull off murderous assaults on our way of life, they are sleeping suspiciously soundly. It seems most likely that America really isn’t acrawl with such enemies, and if it is, they are singularly unimaginative and incompetent. Any random gang of Soldier of Fortune-reading teenagers could land serious blows to America’s infrastructure every day if they didn’t care if they lived or died.
This seems to indicate that Al Qaeda’s gone from our shores, and we can relax. But to assume this would be a mistake with potentially dire consequences.
Yes, any random gang of American teenagers could carry out terrorist actions, as Brian states. But can we really think Al Qaeda, out of any free choice, has decided not to harm us?
Of course not. They continue to be active in Pakistan, France, etc.
In fact, the CIA did a brilliant job of shutting down the recent terrorist attempt to hijack a French airliner.
There is no doubt that they want very much to hit us. So how come they haven’t been able to do so? Fortunately, there are far more obstacles to Al Qaeda operatives in attacking us, than there would be to a random group of Americans. This is because, politically incorrect though it may be to say it, most Al Qaeda operatives don’t look or sound at all like any random gang of American teenagers. That makes it very difficult for them to come here unobserved. It makes it easier to spot them and shut them down, if we are working hard to find them.
It’s only our vigilance that is stopping Al Qaeda from operating successfully here at this time. Relaxing such vigilance would lead quickly to more terrorist attacks on our soil.
