Month: October 2006

This post deserves propagation. Abu Aardvark points out the key sentence in the letter to Zarqawi from al-Qaeda’s central command: “

prolonging the war is in our interest

“. As he explains, this makes perfect sense: the jihadis are unpopular in Iraq, and they would have no chance at all were the country not under foreign occupation. But while we are in the country, they can use their fight against us to build international support. Yes, that’s been obvious for a long time, but it’s something else to have it confirmed from the horse’s mouth. Full letter [http://www.ctc.usma.edu/harmony/CTC-AtiyahLetter.pdf](here), others captured in the same batch [here](http://www.ctc.usma.edu/harmony.asp)

[crossposted to IAG]

A while back the New York Times and the [BBC](http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/5357340.stm) cheerfully reported that 25 Sunni tribes in Anbar had decided to support the Iraqi government in attacking insurgents.

Am I too cynical in thinking that the crucial sentence is this one:

In addition to the government’s blessing, Mr. Rishawi said, the tribes also wanted weapons and equipment to confront the Qaeda-backed insurgents.

Asking for weapons from the government isn’t a sign of loyalty – it’s about getting yourself the equipment to defend yourself against anybody – government, American, jihadi, whatever – who attacks you.

Every Iraqi grouping with an ounce of sense wants to keep itself heavily armed at the moment – and if the kit comes with a vague government permission to use it, so much the better.This isn’t any different from the militias that were incorporated into the various security forces, or the employment of tribes to guard oil pipelines.

Or am I being too cynical?

flat good.

lack of shower curtain or curtain over the bathroom window, not so good. especially when there’s a supermarket opposite.

I’m not usually all that shy about my body. But this is ridiculous.

How can you develop a service without sharing a language with your users?

Holed up in Budapest, my head too messed up to do any proper work (eep! the doom she is a-coming!), I’ve been listening to danah Boyd‘s keynote at the blogtalk conference that’s just winding up in Vienna.

She touches on the fact that the creators of Orkut don’t have the faintest idea what their Portugese or Hindi-speaking users are doing. I’d always vaguely assumed that there would be a fair few Portugese-speakers within the Orkut development team, for instance. But obviously not.

It’d be a nice little project for a journalist or an anthropologist, to work out how much the developers of these sites know about their users.

I’m temporarily turning off comments on this blog, because of the ridiculous amount of comment spam I’m getting right now. No promises about when they’ll come back; probably when I’m sorted out enough to put a bit more content around here.

• I really, really need to get my head down and do some work. I had figured that getting out of Cambridge would clear my head, and in most ways it has, but not to the point where I can sit down and do what I’m supposed to do.
• I find myself almost wishing that Hungarian was spoken by more people. There are some truly beautiful nuances to the language, but there’s no way I’m going to learn it just for 2 months and 13 million speakers. There are some very nice things you can do with affixes to slightly alter the meaning of words. But I’ve consciously decided not to aim higher than the ‘point and gesture’ level.
• That riot thing. Since I’m living stupidly close to the parliament, I’ve beenoccasionally dropping in on the ongoing anti-government protest that’s been happening there since the Prime Minister. It’s impressive how old and calm everybody there is. I mean, an anti-government protest without an angry young man in sight? that’s quite something.

The US Congress has done something remarkably sensible, by tacking onto a defense spending bill a guarantee that they will not establish permanent bases in Iraq. As Reuters says,

“

Democrats and many Republicans say the Iraqi insurgency has been fueled by perceptions the United States has ambitions for a permanent presence in the country.

“

Yep. A [poll](http://www.worldpublicopinion.org/pipa/pdf/sep06/Iraq_Sep06_rpt.pdf) released a few days ago found that 77% of Iraqis believe that the US plans permanent bases in Iraq, down just 3% since January.

The problem is, not even most Americans are going to notice this little message in a corner of a bill, let alone Iraqis. US-funded propaganda outlets might publicise it if they’re smart, but they don’t have any credibility. And anyway, why should they believe what Congress demands, if Bush isn’t willing to state it openly, and if there is always a way to work around it?