To what extent do alternative texts on the internet supplement, substitute for, or complement mainstream news? That's a large question requiring some research to answer, and I'm not the person to do it. (Too lazy.) But I do want to pay some small fragment of attention to the question as it can be judged in the Bush (this Bush)administration's drive toward war with Iraq.

Mainstream news reporting, with a few conspicuous exceptions, has pretty much taken the administration line. Cf. the Saginaw News' headline Sunday morning (print edition) that "Bush says Congress united on Iraq." (I can't find any national news on their website.) Editorials on the New York Times are running more oppositional, and the dregs of "left" publications like the Nation and Mother Jones are against the war. But if you compare US publications with Europeans or others, (slipping into my Yogi Berra mode, here), there's no comparison.

So what alternative sites might be relevant? One place I find convenient for an oppositional line is The Smirking Chimp, which pulls together 8 -10 stories in its interface, offering three 'grafs or so and then both a link to the original publication and the full version in their interface, along with readers' comments (sometimes interesting, usually predictable). I like the Chimp better than BuzzFlash Report, which is a mirror image of the Drudge Report, except ag'in' Bush. (headline for today: "Ashcroft Continues His Incremental Moves Toward Becoming a KGB Chief .") The problem with both of these is that there's too much, too stridently presented. Drudge clearly drove the news cycles during the Clinton/Lewinsky mudslinging a few years ago, so perhaps the opposition wants to use some aspects of the same to push against the Bushbaby.

Smirking Chimp on Saturday, 9/28, referenced Alternet.org, and specifically a piece by Geov Parrish on using the internet to build opposition to attacking Iraq.

The challenge has been obvious: to insert into the public debate a moral critique of an invasion, the part that says that killing is wrong and killing on the pretext of a manufactured crisis is criminal. The critique needs to be linked to the logistical and political objections, which have been raised mostly by conservatives, and that were, only three weeks ago, the only widely visible opposition to the war. The challenge is also to connect with the large numbers of non-activists who simply had their doubts about the wisdom of Dubya's folly, or who sensed that the ceaseless drum-beating for war simply didn't add up.

It's happening.

The only reason -- the only reason -- that Congressional Democrats this past week started speaking out against invasion, in more than their previously token numbers, is because they have been deluged with phone calls, faxes, and e-mails expressing the public's opposition. Polls show widespread doubt. Congressional office intake valves, a measure of the people passionate enough to contact their public officials, has been running more than 90 percent against the planned invasion. And volume has been high.

One topic that interests me here is how effective or ineffective propaganda / PR is in moving mass opinion. There's a lot of inertia and slow lag time in these matters, as not everyone tunes in to a topic at the same time. We'd rather be entertained. Despite their best efforts, the administration has not done very well at building public support for their intended war, mostly I think because the ground isn't there to work with. There was a lot to work with in 9/11, obviously, and strong public support for striking back at Al Qaeda and their base in Afghanistan. But the connections aren't there to Saddam, and they can't be convincingly manufactured out of thin air. So public support runs pretty consistently against anything unilateral (and apart from Britain and a few bought leaders, we won't be going in with allies). Democrats in Congress have for the most part not grown spines yet, so it appears that those who think war would be unwise in current circs are trying to use the net to give them temporary strap-ons.

Some links mentioned by Parrish: Antiwar.org--set up in 1995, they are a spinoff of the Center for Libertarian Studies, and thus are not inherently anti-Bush or anti-Republican.
War-Times--a web site linked to a new print publication (started after 9/11) meant as part of the "peace and justice movement."
Parrish lists a dozen more--I won't bother with links at this point.

An interesting thread which will be emerging in this discussion is the extent to which the administration is interested not in ousting a tyrant, not in eliminating a terrorist or military threat, not in getting Saddam because he tried to kill Papa Bush, but in gaining control over oil resources so as to guarantee cheap oil and reward this administrator's most consistent (and rich) supporters. That's a theme I want to come back to in another post.

Tigers have now lost 22 of 27. I have several thoughts about this.
1. Detroit seems to have more than its share of losing teams (Tigers, Lions, Pistons), with only the Red Wings as long-term champs.
2. Half of all sports teams are going to be losers, and many of the rest will be short of expectations (cf. Tampa Bay Bucs).
3. Why does anyone care?

For those interested in the reliability of mainstream news reports, one of the advocacy sites I watch has an incisive response to an ABC news documentary on the reintroduction of wolves into Idaho: according to FAIR, 71% of those in Idaho support the reintroduction, yet the documentary portrayed strong opposition.

We should not conclude from this instance that ABC routinely distorts its documentaries (still worse, its news)--that would require many more instances. But it's worth considering as an example of the use of evidence to counter assertions.

In one of my classes (the only one not keeping a weblog), we have been drawing contrasts between academic interpretive practice and polemic. The first has as a goal looking for facts and then building an interpretation (subject of course to the usual human and institutional and disciplinary blindnesses), while the second begins with the desired interpretation and then researches facts to support it. Contradictory facts are ignored, suppressed, or explained away. Polemic, IMO, has no place in academic work and should have no place in public discourse: it's dishonest and twisted, and has led to many evils. (Note that all political sides engage in polemic, and we tend to see opposing views' polemic as horrendous, while finding little problem with polemics we agree with. This does not mean that all polemic is ethically equal--some is worse than others.)

Yesterday's Washington Post offers a good instance of what happens when polemic takes over in government. Scientific panels are supposed to advise government agencies on the basis of good science--but the Bush administration has begun to appoint scientists who they know will shape their advice to conform with the desired conclusions. The relevant fields in this case have to do with genetically modified foods, patients' rights, standards for human research, and environmental harm. In some cases the appointments are made to favor relations with the religious right, in others corporate interests.

Nigerian e-mail scam. You may have heard about this or even received an e-mail (I have) -- the premise is that someone in Nigeria wants to move money out of the country, and approaches kind strangers with e-mail addresses, offering to share millions if you give access to your bank account. Some guy decides to have a little fun with these swindlers, carrying on a conversation as James Kirk. Be sure to check out the passport scanned as part of the article.

Just in case anyone's checking this over the weekend . . .

LA Times has an article about weblogs which mentions some of the best known ones, e.g., "On the personal Web sites, bloggers post tidbits of commentary and host unfiltered public forums in which rumors fly, news is weighed and the blog-o-sphere's stars (known simply as Dave, Meg or Evan) are pondered."

Article also mentions academic work on weblogs at Annenberg, as well as themed weblogs like PopCultureJunkMail (note the crappy design).

The Annenberg site above refs another article in the Mercury News, "Internet weblogs offer alternative view of the news."

Metafilter refs Tony Pierce, who goes ballistic about the LA Times article above . . .

I'm going to play with my design over the weekend a little. I don't much like this template but content is more pressing right now.

I read this morning an account of a talk by Kathleen Tierney at the American Sociological Assoc. The gist is that in disaster situations, our leaders go a little bonkers (sometimes more than a little), while ordinary people take action by relying on established social networks and means of doing things. Apparently on 9/11 there was this massive flotilla conveying people from Lower Manhattan--a million or so--which went completely unnoticed by the media portrayals of smoke and ash and the search for military targets.

Source: Alexander Cockburn, "Bush: Still Popular a Year Later? Don't Believe It," in Counterpunch:
(Cockburn is citing Andrew Greeley in the Chicago Sun-Times)
"'Social bonds remained intact and the sense of responsibility to others--family members, friends, fellow workers, neighbors and even total strangers remains strong . . .. People sought information from one another, made inquiries and spoke with loved ones via cell phones, engaged in collective decision-making and helped one another to safety. . . . The response to the Sept. 11 tragedy was so effective precisely because it was not centrally directed and controlled. Instead it was flexible, adaptive and focused on handling problems as they emerged.'"

There *is* information available beyond what gets into mainstream media. The problem is that it can be hard to find, slow to emerge, not widely distributed, and available mainly to people in smaller pockets (bad metaphor--it's more like rhizomes, those connecting tendrils between colonies of plants). But on good days, I'm hopeful that this medium can thrive and link people in unpredictable ways.

First entry. Students in two classes are keeping weblogs, and so it seems reasonable to me to start one to hold odds and ends that I don't want to talk about in class but which catch my attention for some reason.

Title is something I thought about when walking past cars in the parking lot today. It reminded me of the best moment in Jurassic Park, when Spielberg slips in a shot of the tyrannosaurus chasing the jeep as seen in the mirror, with this statement superimposed--probably the biggest laugh in the film. Since both classes are working in some respects with electronic media, reflecting (?) on ways in which media shape the way things appear to us, it seems an appropriate metaphor. At least until I think of a better one and change the title.