February 15, 2003 Header
ARTLUNG: <Joe Crawford> <San Diego> <California> <USA> <FEBRUARY> <2003>

War now According-to-Hoyle Jihad

Oh, great.

Mohammed Sayed Tantawi, a reformist who, as the grand sheik of Al Azhar University, was one of the first clerics to condemn the September 11 attacks and to dismiss Osama bin Laden’s jihadi credentials as fraudulent, ruled that attempts to resist an American attack are a “binding Islamic duty”, and he asked Arab leaders to block any aggression against Iraq.

Maligned previously as a pro-Western reformer, despite his support for Palestinian suicide bombers, Tantawi’s new stance shows the extent of the realignment. Moderates and radicals now appear to be united and determined to oppose the American war.

The big questions now are: how will the new calls to arms be translated in operational terms, and will the battlefield be limited to the Iraqi theatre?

…from Osama must be laughing, in Melbourne’s newspaper, The Age

25 minute song of the day

Billy the Mountain If I listen to it 17 times, at the end of it my workday will be done. I’ll also be slightly insane from the surreal madness of the darn thing.

Blogs / War / Intersection

Soldier ‘bloggers’ report from war: There’s a new breed of combat personnel at the war front: soldier “bloggers.”

Internet contact a blessing, but potential risk, for troops

It’s a strange time. Everywhere I go I overhear people talking about the war and not a lot else. The SSQ talk last night on QA risk management also couldn’t help it – speaking about GPS equipment software failures and jamming and how it relates to risk.

Whatever your stance on the Invasion and Operations in Iraq, I know that those of us who are US Citizens hope that our military people come home in one piece, and that the people of Iraq don’t suffer overmuch.

The intersection of the current conflict and internet (journalism, blogging, news alerts, news aggregators, email, etc) is an interesting one – and *this* topic (as opposed to more general talk positive/negative on the war) seems ripe for discussion.

One thing in particular caught my eye:

“The Army even gives soldiers accounts to set up password-protected sites.”

(from the pilotonline link above).

The level of communication is really stunning when you think about it.

Link-O-Rama – some war, some tech, some misc

Radio Show, Online

So now I’ve been on the radio twice, once on KPBS’s The Lounge, and last month, talking about current issues in web design, on These Days. Here’s the RealAudio of that show, also added as a link on the ever growing Writing & Citations page.

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