BLOGS AT HARVARD: Here’s an interview with Dave Winer about his new role as Blogger-in-Residence.

SCOTT GANZ has an idea for a “pledge drive across warbloggerdom.” Sounds good to me.

RUSSELL WORKING is reporting from Turkey via blog. Lots of interesting stuff, but this passage really grabbed my eye:

There is a reason for the intensity of reaction to an American in Europe. It can be summed up in a cartoon that ran in Greek paper To Ethnos. A befuddled chairman of the board—he is Greece’s prime minister and EU president Costas Simitis—sits before a company board reading from a report: “Dear Shareholders: It’s my impression you still have reservations about the prospects of the company.”

Meanwhile, his board members are scurrying about, finding ways to kill themselves: rigging up nooses, leaping out of windows, firing guns through their heads. On the wall is the name of the corporation, which Greece happens to head during this six-month period: The European Union.

My advice: sell.

DONALD SENSING WRITES THAT Afghanistan was a Southerners’ war. Iraq, on the other hand, will be a Northerners’ war.

He’s also got a transcript of Bush’s speech.

ROGER BOURNIVAL reports that bogus-casualty-figure purveyer Marc Herold has a book coming out — and promotional literature has inflated the death toll again!

AN INSIGHTFUL COMMENT on the demise of Salon and many other dot-coms:

The biggest thing that killed the dot-com boom was the exorbitant cost structure the companies put in place, especially in real estate.

Let’s look at the major epicenters of dot-com activity: Boston, Manhattan, San Francisco, and Seattle. What do those cities have in common? Some of the highest rents in the country (as well as inflated costs of living, which required higher salaries).

The great benefit the Internet was supposed to bring was the complete de-emphasis of physical location. Salon could have found a home in, say, Springfield, Mass., where rents are cheap, there’s a strong supply of intellectuals (the Five Colleges in Hampshire County), New York and Boston are close at hand, and the cost-of-living is lower.

The fact that sites which avoided getting the priciest digs (I’m looking at you, Kuro5hin) have survived and maybe even thrived is a testament to the folly of Salon, Inside, Slate, and all the other online media startups.

InstaPundit, of course, survives largely via low overhead.

AGAINST THE AXIS OF EVIL, AND THE AXIS OF WEASELS: The Axis of Hygiene.

I’M INTERVIEWED (right next to William Gibson!) over on the SuicideGirls site.

PRESIDENT BUSH IS PUSHING DEMOCRACY IN IRAQ:

Bringing stability and unity to a free Iraq will not be easy. Yet that is no excuse to leave the Iraqi regime’s torture chambers and poison labs in operation. Any future the Iraqi people choose for themselves will be better than the nightmare world that Saddam Hussein has chosen for them. . . .

Rebuilding Iraq will require a sustained commitment from many nations, including our own: We will remain in Iraq as long as necessary, and not a day more. America has made and kept this kind of commitment before — in the peace that followed a world war. After defeating enemies, we did not leave behind occupying armies, we left constitutions and parliaments. We established an atmosphere of safety, in which responsible, reform-minded local leaders could build lasting institutions of freedom. In societies that once bred fascism and militarism, liberty found a permanent home.

Of course, as this article notes,

The U.S. president’s words also could send a chill down the spines of some of the nondemocratic leaders in the region.

Some?

MARK KLEIMAN WANTS TO KNOW if I condemn this prosecution and conviction of British Muslim cleric Abdullah el-Faisal, for “soliciting murder and inciting racial hatred.”

The answer is, I don’t know, because I’m not sure what he was convicted of. Solicitation of murder usually means (in the United States, anyway) trying to have a specific person killed — that’s how I read the story when I commented, earlier, on the striking fact that the judge decided to exclude Hindus and Jews from the jury. (I thought it was something like this solicitation of murder prosecution).

Kleiman seems to think that this is purely a “hate speech” prosecution. I’m against those. Is that what this case is about? I don’t know; the story’s certainly consistent with Kleiman’s reading, but it’s not clear.

This story from the Times, however, says:

In his lectures, which included titles such as No Peace with the Jews and Them versus Us, the cleric exhorted audiences to take up acts of terrorism, including the use of chemical and nuclear weapons. He also tried to recruit British schoolboys to terrorist training camps.

In the United States, under the First Amendment, you could only convict if you could convince a court that these statements were intended to produce, and were likely to produce, imminent unlawful activity. From these facts, it’s entirely possible that these statements would meet the test. Indeed, recruiting schoolboys to terrorist training camps would seem to fall outside any reasonable zone of free speech, wouldn’t it? That’s not just speech, it’s illegal activity in itself. After all, “your money or your life” is speech, but it’s not protected by the First Amendment. Neither is recruiting terrorists. (As distinct from abstract advocacy of terrorism.)

And, as Kleiman surely knows, the First Amendment doesn’t apply in Britain. But, leaving the Constitution aside, do I think that it’s wrong, morally or (in a more general, common-law-ish sense) legally, to punish someone for that kind of conduct? Uh, no. Recruiting schoolboys as terrorists seems to me to be classic criminal conspiracy.

It’s possible, of course, that these stories give the wrong idea of the facts, but Kleiman didn’t state what facts he thought made this case particularly troubling, so I can’t say more than I have.

UPDATE: British solicitor Martin Pratt emails:

El-Faisal was convicted of three counts of Soliciting to Commit Murder under The Offences Against the Person Act 1861 and three counts of Incitement to Racial Hatred under The Public Order Act 1986.

From your explanation, it seems that in order to obtain a conviction for solicitation to commit murder the requisite elements are pretty similar to those in the United States.

Incitement to Racial hatred on the other hand, as you say, is a hate speech crime and I am pretty sure would not be compatible with the First Amendment. Under the 1986 Act if a person –

* Uses words or behaviour /displays written material, which are

* threatening/abusive/insulting, with

* intent/likely to stir up racial hatred

Then upon indictment he may receive a prison sentence not exceeding 2 years.

For the purposes of the Act, racial hatred is defined as –

“Racial hatred means that hatred against a group of persons in Great Britain defined by reference to colour, race, nationality (including citizenship) or ethnic or national origins”.

The Tory legacy to the criminal justice system is not glorious, and this is one example of their over attention to headline pleasing sentencing guidelines and under attention to properly defining what exactly an offence consists of. Prosecutions under this offence are rare as no-one (so far as I am aware, I have not practiced criminal law since my articles, this all comes from half remembered law school lectures) has yet managed to define “hatred” which is pretty fundamental to the offence.

However, offences under the 1861 Act are far more serious and Solicitation to Commit Murder can carry a life sentence which I would imagine the judge will be considering. Of course in England and Wales, once the jury has convicted, it is for the judge to determine sentence.

So there you are.

YES, I KNOW: Another day of limited posting. I’ve had seemingly endless faculty meetings, committee meetings, etc. — as well as my regular classes. More later, but this whole week may be on the light side. That’s frustrating, because I’ve got a big back burner of posts I’d like to get to, but that I don’t have time to write. But hey — this is a blog. It’s not like it’s my actual job.

HERE’S A BLOG that you really ought to be reading.

REPORT FROM AFGHANISTAN: Things aren’t so bad:

Many of those perceived troubles are real and worrisome, and nobody would mistake Kabul for a prosperous and peaceful city. Sections are still in ruins, and many of the 600,000 returning refugees who have flooded the city live precariously on the margins. Islamic militants remain determined to destabilize and oust the Karzai government through violence, and periodic attacks continue. There is also concern that the flashier developments could offend conservative Afghan attitudes and create a dangerously wide divide between the relatively rich and the very poor.

But whatever the risks, the Kabul of today is almost unrecognizable as the austere city ruled not long ago by the Taliban — or as the place where warring Islamic militias demolished neighborhood after neighborhood, or where Soviets presided over a rebellious socialist state. . . .

In a city that had a handful of shopworn eating places two years ago, a new Chinese or Italian or American hamburger restaurant opens almost weekly, as well as kebab shops by the score. Small hotels have sprung up, and a $40 million Hyatt is on the way. The food bazaars are bustling and there are downtown blocks filled almost entirely with bridal shops. Rebuilt homes are rising from the ruins, and every little storefront seems to be stuffed with bathtubs or fans or with men building and carving things to be sold.

There’s a lot that should still be done — but remember, we didn’t start the Marshall Plan until after World War II was thoroughly over. This war is still underway.

MICROSOFT WINDOWS UPDATE is spying on you. So is Windows Media Player.

Hmm. How much of that information can the government get, as part of the antitrust settlement?

TODAY is the tenth anniversary of the first WTC attack — the Technoptimist has some thoughts.

HERE’S MORE EVIDENCE (er, well, actually it’s just some evidence, since my snarky comments below don’t count) that antiwar protests actually increase support for war:

“Some people have their minds made up, but many people are still uninformed,” said Veronica Marks, a fourth-year sociology student and anti-war activist who attended the last two San Francisco demonstrations.

Marks protests to combat what she sees as a biased media and to let people know Bush is a “tyrant.”

But according to a study by political science graduate student Phil Gussin, the opinions of people who conditionally supported war changed toward favoring war when shown photographs of Bush and then of anti-war demonstrators.

“If anti-war demonstrators are trying to gather support by having their pictures shown, they are having the opposite effect,” Gussin said.

Subjects who were shown pictures of the president had a seven percent higher approval rating for Bush compared to those who were shown other, non-political pictures, Gussin said. Subjects shown pictures of Bush and anti-war photographs had a 15 percent higher approval rating than the control group, Gussin said.

I seem to recall Eric Alterman alluding to similar research from the Vietnam era, but I can’t find the link.

(Via Russell Wardlow).

UPDATE: I like this one though.

NPR IS GETTING A LOT OF FLAK from American Jews over its Middle East coverage.

(Via Romenesko).

IT’S PEOPLE LIKE THE ONES DESCRIBED IN THIS POST who give professors a bad name. Of course, I wasn’t there, but the story seems all too credible.

IRAQIS TO AMERICA: PLEASE DON’T BACK DOWN AGAIN!

“We want the Americans to come, and if they come tomorrow it will not be too soon,” said an unemployed 23-year old visiting from the southern Iraqi city of Basra. “People are nervous, people are afraid, we don’t want war. But do we want to change the government and we will welcome anyone who comes to get rid of Saddam.”

Well, that’s pretty much how I feel. And other Americans agree — here’s a Minnesota group that has given away over 5,000 “Liberate Iraq” signs in the past two weeks. They’ve got a cool informational video on the web, too. Just more of that grassroots pro-liberation activism that I’ve been writing about!

UPDATE: This article by Amir Taheri, on the anti-war movement’s unwillingness to listen to actual Iraqis, is worth reading, too. Excerpt:

“Are these people ignorant, or are they blinded by hatred of the United States?” Nasser the poet demanded.

The Iraqis would have had much to tell the “antiwar” marchers, had they had a chance to speak. Fadel Sultani, president of the National Association of Iraqi authors, would have told the marchers that their action would encourage Saddam to intensify his repression.

“I had a few questions for the marchers,” Sultani said. “Did they not realize that oppression, torture and massacre of innocent civilians are also forms of war? Are the antiwar marchers only against a war that would liberate Iraq, or do they also oppose the war Saddam has been waging against our people for a generation?”

Hey, those are the same questions that I’ve been asking!

UPDATE: Here’s more on the subject, from an Iraqi exile in the Christian Science Monitor.

BOTTOM-UP MEDIA: My TechCentralStation column for today is up.

BIG PROTESTS LAST WEEK. Growing support for war this week. Coincidence?

JOHN HOWARD EXPLAINS WHY we can’t contain Saddam.

Along the same lines, Stephen Green offers Nick Kristof a history lesson.

HUGO CHAVEZ UPDATE:

We know how Hugo Chavez treats Venezuelans who criticize him: He shoots them.

How does Chavez respond to criticism from abroad? Well, it looks as if we found out the other day.

On Monday, Colombia and Spain both issued strong statements critical of Chavez.

Early on Tuesday, large explosions occurred at both the Columbian and Spanish embassies in Venezuela.

Pure coincidence, no doubt. Go here and here for more. Meanwhile Chavez is blaming the opposition, of course.

MORE CRUSHING OF DISSENT. Where’s Molly Ivins? Where’s “Reporters Without Borders?” Where’s Phil Donahue? Oh, right. . .

RAISE RUSH LIMBAUGH’S BLOOD PRESSURE — KEEP SALON ALIVE! So writes David Talbot, who I suspect is more of a threat to his creditors’ stress levels than to Limbaugh’s. Actually, of course, I’d like to see Salon survive, but I don’t really see how it can.

It’s Mickey Kaus who does (well, did) the “assignment desk” feature, but I’d like to see someone who really understands the economics of web publishing, and who can get insiders to dish, write a postmortem piece that clearly — and, probably, juicily — explains just how it’s possible to go through that much money publishing a web magazine.