The Flame to End All Flames When some email or Usenet post makes you want to scream, try this.

The Times : Where war is a way of life BY NICK DANZIGER
Returning from Afghanistan, the author, who has travelled before with its warlords, says that before taking action there, the West should remember what an unforgiving place it is Worth reading.

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Shared Voice.org : Another petition. Well put.

Disconnect the Dots (washingtonpost.com) : Applying network analysis to the problem of fighting terrorists.

Defend liberty - especially now - As the world debates how to combat terrorism, we should not allow our own leaders to erode freedom, in our name. [Spiked Online] Indeed.

World War 3: Example Weapons Well we are on a grim humour kick this morning, aren't we?

GNN CounterIntelligence: Boom, Bust and Echo : A Dark Theory Behind Black Tuesday Which may be a fantasy.

The Petition : (for peaceful resolution)

Have a scan down though the local news from the Iran-Afghanistan-Pakistan region. It makes grim reading. Pakistan and Iran have shut their borders (whatever that means). Afghanistan has had three years of drought and is 1-2 million tons of grain short in supplies for this winter. All western aid has been removed. Over 1 million Afghan DPs may starve to death.

And in the middle of all that are 8 Aid workers (including 2 Americans) that are in prison for "attempting to spread Christianity".

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Buckminster Fuller said that the best antidote to war was economic interdependence. I think the Internet and what has happened in the last 4 days has shown that communication interdependence is up there with it. China joining the WTO and internet based dissent in Tehran are instructive here.

There's been a suggestion for a new Marshall plan and "bombing" with food aid. They should make sure that the parcels contain wind up radios (and Sat TV receivers?). I can't quite imagine how wide spread internet access in the backward repressive regimes can be achieved, but in the long term it's certainly possible. Every repressive regime attempts to control access to the media (Didn't the Taliban ban TV?), but tech now allows us to by-pass this. And it's that much more powerful when it provides a back channel and gives them a voice as well.

The potential danger here is that "US Cultural Imperialism" is one of the things that these regimes are fighting against. Bombing them with communications access may be seen as an act of war. Especially if the only content available is The Voice of America. But providing them with the same access to all the media that we have helps them to make choices. And the same lesson is available to us. We should be paying attention to media that present the other side of the argument. Not just the filtered view that CNN provides.

Feed a man for a day, teach him to feed himself, education for children and planting trees are stages in a long term process. But it's education that changes the world most. We should be doing everything possible to provide the means for the indiginous populations to educate themselves.

Ii think it's important in this age of universal access that some of us pay attention to alternate news sources. To that end, we've started building sources of headlines and RSS XML syndication feeds of the same for news sources specifically aimed at the Middle East. I've managed to scrape or find 3 Afghan news sites, and we also have Pakistan's main news outlet. The results can be seen here. http://www.newsisfree.com/sources/bycat/78/

Newisfree is also producing a composite feed about Black Tuesday.
http://www.newsisfree.com/sources/feeds/wtc/

Another good source of Afghan News media is the DMOZ entry at
http://dmoz.org/Regional/Asia/Afghanistan/News_and_Media/

And then the Moreover categories at
http://w.moreover.com/categories/category_list.html
and specifically, Middle East news
http://www.moreover.com/cgi-local/page?o=portal&c=Mideast%20news
and Central Asia News
http://www.moreover.com/cgi-local/page?o=portal&c=Central%20Asia%20news

Today's CD - Groove Armada - goodbye country (hello nightclub)

The Times : There is a saying in the Middle East: what happens in Afghanistan decides the course of history. And another one. He describes Afghanistan as I remember it, as well.

Two voices of Reason in today's papers.

The bigger they come the harder they fall MATTHEW PARRIS
Instead we should ask what makes a Muslim terrorist. It is rage. Can we understand the rage? Surely we can. Many in the Middle East, including many who are not extremists, resent American involvement there, propping up favoured states and undermining others. Few Muslims — even among those America supports — can be comfortable with this; many are angered, and a hard core are enraged.

Americans are blind to barbarians at their gates - JONATHAN CLARK
In their reaction to these attacks, they will be what history has made them

Will the graphic exposure of America to terrorism result in less funding by the americans of the IRA?

Boing Boing: A Directory of Wonderful Things : But the Taliban and Ben Laden are not Afghanistan. They're not even the government of Afghanistan. The Taliban are a cult of ignorant psychotics who took over Afghanistan in 1997. Bin Laden is a political criminal with a plan. When you think Taliban, think Nazis. When you think Bin Laden, think Hitler. And when you think "the people of Afghanistan" think "the Jews in the concentration camps." It's not only that the Afghan people had nothing to do with this atrocity. They were the first victims of the perpetrators.

Vote.com is running a series of votes on things like "Should the US declare war on terrorists and the countries that harbour them". Scary reading when you find you're disagreeing with the majority.

Calamitous Perspective : On the Bombings - Noam Chomsky Noam is always good for some thoughtful analysis.