Zionists responsible for 9/11 attack on Empire State Building (sic) video revelation from Egyptian professor. (Via Harry)

The BBC has been accused of pro-Israeli bias. Whatever next? The Guardian becoming pro war?

An excellent story in this month’s Wired magazine about military bloggers.

Milbloggers constitute a rich subculture with a refreshing candor about the war, expressing views ranging from far right to far left. They also offer helpful tips about tearing down an M16, recipes for beef stew (hint: lots of red wine), reviews of the latest episode of 24, extremely technical discussions of Humvee armor configurations, and exceptionally raw accounts of field hospital chaos, gore, and heroism.

Link here.

A new header image! A new beginning? I doubt it. Many thanks to Simon for the professional photoshopping work.

Debra Burlingame, sister of the pilot of American Airlines flight 77, which crashed at the Pentagon on September 11, 2001, delivers a passionate opinion piece about plans for an International Freedom Center at Ground Zero (IFC) in the Gotham Gazette. Ms Burlingame thinks too much space, money, and importance is being given to the IFC, which will be a museum charting the history of freedom (whatever that is).

A separate memorial to victims of September 11 will occupy a smaller, underground space at the World Trade Center site. And the memorial is being overseen by the World Trade Center Memorial Foundation, of which Ms Burlingame is a member of the board of directors. Here are some of her thoughts about the IFC:

Rather than a respectful tribute to our individual and collective loss, they will get a slanted history lesson, a didactic lecture on the meaning of liberty in a post-9/11 world. They will be served up a heaping foreign policy discussion over the greater meaning of Abu Ghraib and what it portends for the country and the rest of the world.

[...]More disturbing, the Lower Manhattan Development Corp. is handing over millions of federal dollars and the keys to that building to some of the very same people who consider the post-9/11 provisions of the Patriot Act more dangerous than the terrorists that they were enacted to apprehend — people whose inflammatory claims of a deliberate torture policy at Guantanamo Bay are undermining this country’s efforts to foster freedom elsewhere in the world.

My gut reaction is that while not wholeheartedly convinced by Ms Burlingame’s arguments I can certainly see where she is coming from—especially having recently visited The Price of Freedom: Americans at War, at the Smithsonian National Museum of American History in Washington, DC (which as a non-American I found overly simplistic and overly patriotic). It’s not that I don’t agree with the concept. But I doubt that visitors, especially foreign visitors, to the World Trade Center site are going to be interested in an American lecture on human rights. In fact, I’m not so sure such a museum even belongs on the WTC site. I fail to see the connection. And as Ms Burlingame points out:

The public will have come to see 9/11 but will be given a high-tech, multimedia tutorial about man’s inhumanity to man.

Unfortunately, the argument in favor of the IFC, written by Richard Tofel, the president of the International Freedom Center, is limp at best:

“9/11 is a story of courage, hope, and freedom: the courage to make the decision to go into the buildings to save someone, the hope to start anew after disaster, the wish to base our society on free will in the context of a pluralistic public sphere. It was a moment of truth in the story of freedom, and it connects the United States with democratic revolutions around the world, which share this quality of believing in the possibility of new beginnings.” Out of the tragedy of September 11 came a renewed civic spirit, and the International Freedom Center will work to sustain that. This is work that can unite people of goodwill everywhere.

Not convinced? Me neither.

Gotham Gazette story
New York Times story about newly released 9/11 tapes and transcripts
World Trade Center Memorial Foundation website
International Freedom Center website

Hicks! Turn that volume up! (Via BoingBoing.)

Clive Davis has had a number of responses to an excellent article he wrote for Tech Central Station about anti-Americanism in the UK. Here’s an extract from the piece:

There’s no question that media bias plays a major part in skewing public perceptions. The BBC, which once brought us that epic TV series “Alistair Cooke’s America”, seldom misses an opportunity to portray the States as violent, dysfunctional and imperialist. A left-liberal mind-set is de rigueur at Broadcasting House, tarnishing what is still, in many ways, a great institution. In this closed world neocons, not Islamists, are regarded as the great threat to democracy. Unfortunately, even in these days of multi-channel broadcast, the Corporation’s huge resources and its immense cultural reach mean that it still sets the agenda. While the national press is slightly less shrill, pro-American commentators are very much a minority. When the first bouts of hysteria erupted over Guantanamo Bay, it was the Mail on Sunday — regarded as the voice of Middle England — which published some of the shrillest commentary.

And here’s one of the responses.

*I cannot tell you the number of Brits I meet–ALL of whom immediately comment on how little Americans know about Europe and how little they travel here. I know it’s not the same thing as anti-Americanism itself, but it’s a version of it–the tone is always derogatory. I usually respond by asking them where Kansas is and what states border it (proving they know s**t about America)… And then I remark that with only two weeks of annual leave per year (which includes sick leave) most Americans can only dream of traveling, and don’t have the luxury of free time to sit at a cafe and talk to foreigners about American arrogance–they’re too busy working…. I’m unhappy with the mess that is America right now, but Brits do seem to have a special knack for making it personal.

You can find the rest here.