Burrowowl

Ages ago comic books graced the shelves of newspaper stands across the United States. When I was a child, the local 7-11 had about eighteen shelf-feet of Marvel and DC comics right up front near the cash register to lure young shoppers in the door. The world has moved on, and the comic book publishers and distributors have had trouble keeping up. They switched over from cheap newsprint to glossy high-quality paper, improved their printing techniques, and saw their production costs go through the roof. The $3.99 cover price of Dark Avengers #6 isn’t primarily due to the jet-setting lifestyle of Brian Bendis and Mike Deodato, but rather due to an ailing business model, which has a lot to do with why 7-11 doesn’t stock it. Can Longbox be the answer?

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I’ve heard a lot about these new-fangled Facebooks and My Spaces and Twitters and such. They’re basically variations on the old-timey bulletin board systems I used to frequent before the world wide web hit. That 2400 baud Hayes modem was big pimpin’. But I digress. I know a lot of people that spend a fair amount of time an energy on Facebook. The CEO of the company I work for has a facebook page. So does my wife. And my sister. But not me.

Why? Well mostly because of how I was first introduced to it. Somebody comes across something interesting, publishes his thoughts about it and maybe a picture onto his page, and sends me a link. Or tweets about it. Or posts to a web forum. Doesn’t matter. I know the person, and am pretty numb regarding nonsense like duckrolls and rickrolls, so I follow it. When it lands on Facebook, the link provided invariably takes me to the following:

No, thank you. I won’t be signing in or signing up to view what amounts to a random blog post. My opinion of the poster takes a hit every time I run across this error, particularly when the link was put somewhere open to the public. This is somehow even more obnoxious than CAPTCHA systems, as those are most frequently employed to deter automated spam.

It’s everywhere. Listen. Listen. Listen. Here come the drums. Here come the drums.

As you may have heard, Iran had their presidential election last Friday. This would come as a surprise to most people who base their knowledge of Iran on the news coverage they receive in the United States, because President Ahmedinejad is frequently referred to as a dictator in the press. We also get the impression that the president of Iran would be in a position to authorize military attacks against other countries. We also get the impression that Iran has been exceptionally belligerent since the 1979 islamic revolution.

None of those impressions are particularly true, but that hardly matters. When the official results were announced, the leading opposition candidate Mousavi cried foul. Credulous bloggers and tweeters around the world stood at attention and immediate cries of election fraud were echoing through the Internet. Ahmedinejad couldn’t have won! 75% of Iranians are under 27 years old! The youth hunger for reform! Mousavi is the great hope for democracy in Iran! Where is my vote! Holy shit, people got shot at the riots!

I’m a knee-jerk skeptic at heart, so I took all of this with a grain of salt and a bit of caution. When storefronts are being vandalized in the midst of a massive political protest, there’s going to be teargas. There are going to be policemen in scary riot armor. People are going to get beaten. This happens in any country over any issue. In most parts of the world, when protests of this scale and character take place, somebody gets shot. Unfortunate, but true.

The main problem I see with the outside world’s reaction to Iran’s election results, whether on blogs or Twitter or CNN or my local newspaper, is that we’re getting the same echo chamber effect I’ve seen before. This is the kind of coverage we got about Panama before we invaded to snatch up Noriega. This is the kind of coverage we got about Iraq before each time we invaded there. This is the kind of coverage we got about Serbia before we started bombing Belgrade and putting soldiers into Kosovo.

Step away from your keyboard for a second. Take a deep breath. Count to ten slowly. Exhale. Think for a second about the tone you’re adding to the public conversation of this matter. Are you being constructive? What are the foreseeable consequences of what you’re contributing to? Are you speaking to the facts, or echoing and amplifying rumor and propaganda?

“Where is my vote?” is a question asked by many in Tehran this week. It was asked by many in Ohio in 2004 and Florida in 2000 and Texas in 1960. In modern democracies we vote anonymously to avoid undue pressure, but anonymity removes accountability and requires some element of trust. Let them work it out.

related:

• Pollster uses two-year-old video (but “does it matter?”)
• A partial account of wildly-inaccurate reporting via Twitter
• and yes, the results really do look implausible. I’m not denying that.

1. Think before negotiating: If you fire at them with everything you have, could you remove the need to negotiate?
2. If negotiation is a necessity, think while doing so: what is the best way to cleave the enemy ambassadors in twain?
3. If all else fails, fighting is always the answer.
4. If fighting fails, you are not fighting hard enough.
5. If you are not fighting hard enough, fight louder.
6. The best approach is always from the front.
7. If the enemy has left their flanks open, feint and then attack from the front.
8. If the front is heavily defended, they are expecting a flank attack. Attack from the front.
9. If their flanks and front is both heavily defended but they are vulnerable to an aerial strike, distract them with aerial bombardment and then attack from the front.
10. If attacking from the front does not work, you are not fighting hard enough. See point 5.
11. If attacking from the front is still not working, you’re obviously not attacking their front! See point 6.
12. If there is no possibility for victory, attack from the front as furiously and loudly as possible. Remember: the greater the defeat, the greater the moral victory.

Diplomacy is over-rated.

In late 1989, democracy and market capitalism were finally winning the cold war. Solidarity was heading towards political victory against the incumbent Communist party in Poland. Germany was on the road to reunification. Czechoslovakia’s Velvet Revolution was brewing. Hungary was adopting a multi-party electoral system. Bulgaria would follow soon after. The people of Eastern Europe were pulling the plug on International Communism’s life support.

But on June 3rd, twenty years ago today, the government of the People’s Republic of China wasn’t having any of that. Thousands of students and intellectuals seeking political and economic reforms had gathered in Tiananmen Square in April to honor the death of Hu Yaobang, a political reformer. After two weeks of martial law, and protesters blocking soldiers from entering the square, the army got serious and things went south in a hurry. Armored personnel carriers and troopers with fixed bayonets closed in. Shots were fired by the soldiers, firebombs thrown by protesters, and over the next two days an unknown number of people would die.

China’s still a communist dictatorship. Political freedom remains next-to-nonexistant. A great many economic reforms have come through, allowing many to benefit and suffer from the freedom and predations of a limited market economy. A search of images.google.cn for “tiananmen square massacre” still looks just like a search for “tiananmen square,” but at least they’ll bow to explicit searches for “tiananmen square tank.” Maybe there’s some political progress after all.