David Rhode is a reporter who was held captive by the Taliban after securing an interview with one of their leaders.

I wanted to sift this but it's a javascript embed, so no dice.

Part 5 will, presumably, be posted tomorrow.

video: http://projects.nytimes.com/held-by-the-taliban
article: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/18/world/asia/18hostage.html

I'm not quite sure I understand what the thinking was behind the Nobel committee's decision, but as usual, I find it fascinating to watch the political sphere react en masse to this kind of political hand grenade being tossed into the mix.

... more inside ...

Yair Lapid is one of the most prominent Israeli journalists. He hosts a weekend news show and writes columns for several newspapers, including the one I'm translating here. I felt very strongly about this particular column, and decided to share it with the Sift.
When commenting, please do two things - Remember that he is writing to Israelis, and read the whole thing, please, don't just read a couple of paragraphs, TL;DR, and skip to the usual comments.

-------------------------------------------------------------

We've stopped being "cool."
By Yair Lapid

We've had problems here since ever, but up until a few years ago, we were one of the "coolest" countries on Earth. When you met an American and told him you're from Israel, they would immediately say "Wow". It wasn't always clear what they said it about, but it was some kind of "wow" - about the high-tech, the most beautiful girls in the world, the Entebbe operation, the Six Day War, the Kibbutzim, "Exodus", the Mossad, the oranges, or the fact that the weak little Jews suddenly went to the beach and got a tan.

And sometime in the last decade, it was over. "I'm from Israel" you say to John Smith who is sucking on his beer, and he raises a foggy look, "you've got a lot of problems down there, man," he says, "it must be tough."

And John is still OK, he has a nephew serving in Iraq and he hates the "fucking Towel Heads" (the American equivalent to "Arabushim"). Maggie from London just takes her cocktail and walks away with a rather too upright blond neck, so you won't miss her loathing, Julio from Madrid has a Kefiah tied around his neck because he identifies with the screwed people of the world, and Jorgen from Munich - from Munich! God! - says he's a pacifist - which is code for not being willing to take blame for the Holocaust, he wasn't born then yet, and we shouldn't think it justifies everything.

There's something insulting about that. Like being the Prom Queen who got fat, or the moment when you meet - after 20 years - the captain of the basketball team, the one you cheered for until your throat was sore, and find out he's a complete idiot.

Because we're not "cool" anymore. Everything that used to be funny is now problematic. The villager walking into the Opera house in Vienna wearing biblical sandals was replaced by a bunch of teenagers destroying a hotel in Napa. And the guy who got to New York with 10 dollars and became a Millionaire, is now a suspect in a real-estate fraud case and is wanted in 6 countries. Instead of bringing drip-irrigation to Africa, we're selling weapons to the worst governments on Earth. The best army in the world gets photographed the worst on CNN.

And in response we're grumpy and complaining, calling them "Anti-semites", which of course makes things worse, since there's nothing less "cool" than a whiner, but we're stuck with the insult in our throat, and what can we do? Shut up? Leave the stage to the bad-guys?

Only it's not clear what we want from them, because even to ourselves we're not "cool" anymore. Instead of drying swamps we're dehydrating on the bench, collecting social security, the Bible is a settlement on Mt. Hebron, and the guy who calls you "my brother" is about to draw a knife and stab you in the parking lot.

We're the first to admit - in the headlines - that we're intolerable, but when someone else says it, we're always shocked. Because there's no Israeli who doesn't cringe when we kill (by accident, damnit, by accident!) kids in Gaza, but when they write about it in "Newsweek" we're offended to the bottom of our soul. Because we were hoping they wouldn't see us, that it's internal information, that in a world of a thousand TV stations and a million websites, no one will notice.

So it's true that we've had radical left-wing groups working against us around the world for years - backed by Islamic money and supported by self-hating Jews - but it's hard to say we didn't give them material to work with. Because the first rule of "cool" is that no one will love you if you won't love yourself.

We are no longer "cool." We were, and have ceased to be. We are a country - another country - stuck in the wrong side of the Globe, being broadcast between riots in Malaysia to the earthquake in Indonesia, too sweaty, not very graceful, one whose relatives are a bit ashamed of her but will still love her despite her drawbacks, and whose mistakes go unforgiven by everyone so she has to forgive herself, who has some good things - even great - but she still screws up quite a bit. Who has gained too much weight, and no one falls for her at the traffic light anymore, who has to pick being pretty or right, because the two don't fit together.

So should we give up? Forget it, realize that no one will look at us adoringly from the side, wishing they could be like us, or at least our friend? Of course not.

Whoever loved us before will happily come back to cuddle in our arms. Look at the United States in the first few months of Obama: in 5 minutes they went from being a hated empire, to a sexy country everybody wants to get in bed with. The biggest advantage of a flexible world, is that the public mind can change in an instant. Even China is "cool" all of a sudden. For a thousand years she's been the "Yellow Giant" and all of a sudden we're the ones yellow with envy.

It can happen to us as well, but with all due respect to the Explanation Office (raise your hand if you knew we had a re-formed Explanation office, and we even have a Minister of Explanation? What's wrong with you, of course we do, his name is Yuli Edelstein, haven't you noticed how popular we are ever since he was appointed?), if we want to be the guy who gets invited to all the right parties - it was to be for the right reasons.

You can't keep talking about the Holocaust if you don't look after the Holocaust survivors starving at your doorstep; You can't be mad at Jew-hatred if Arab-hatred is running your life; You can't expect to be taken seriously if three outlaw 17-year-olds can run your life from a trailer in the Territories; You can't keep asking for credit for being "the only democracy in the middle east," if your democracy is dysfunctional.

Because it's time we admitted the world isn't automatically against us. Even the Swedes - the same Swedes who made us so mad - gave us Nobel Prizes recently, and organized - of their own volition, but who here remembers the good things - the most important Holocaust memorial committee ever held in Europe.

Many will say that being "cool" isn't worth it. That it's not worth giving up the territories for, or preventing the IDF's freedom of operation, or interrupting Liberman (our foreign minister) from sticking a finger in their eye every time he meets them. It might not be. Israel wasn't formed so they would say the Jews are nice - but so that the Jews could tell them all to stick it.

But just admit you miss the time when every time we walked into a room, all the prettiest girls wanted to dance with us.

Obama made another fine speech on the The anniversary is the collapse of Lehman Brothers (ok 1 day beforehand)
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/32841497/ns/business-economy_in_turmoil/

1. Obama is bought and paid for by Wall Street.
2. Obama crisis management skills are exactly equal to or defeated by a wet paper bag.

You can say Obama's economic policy is not bad, but you should know that they are really the last president's bailout policy.
Also the TARP plan has a good intention, but it's just a one time fix. It's supposed to kick the economy back up to speed. As if.

"Mexico decriminalized small amounts of marijuana, cocaine and heroin on Friday — a move that prosecutors say makes sense even in the midst of the government's grueling battle against drug traffickers." - http://rawstory.com/blog/2009/08/mexico-legalizes-drug-posession/

Who's coming with me?

OK, are the things said in this video speech by John Pilger that seems to be doing the rounds amongst a certain group of netizens


valid?

I'm really, really busy at work at present, and haven't the time to look into all the claims against Obama, and I know that the sift has many strident supporters and also those who dislike him.

What say you all as to the veracity of these claims?

A nice little article i just read on yahoo news page.. Not meant to start a raging debate, not meant to be inflammatory, just a well written piece on the benefits of a system like the NHS, and the way the NHS is being used as the posterboy for the apocalypse by certain politicians in the US.

http://uk.news.yahoo.com/blog/talking_politics/article/55620/

Interesting read and some excellent points made. Hard for a brit to understand why the US are against a free and non-obligatory minimum standard of healthcare for all - it genuinely is. And having seen the recent Obama video, harder still.

This a good read to anyone from the US?

Neat little image at http://www.visualeconomics.com/military-spending-worldwide/

Got this in an email.. Thought I'd share.

Hey check out these links when you get the chance. Just a few tidbits about how the US ranks in comparison to other countries.



http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Privacy_International

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Education_Index

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democracy_Index

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Programme_for_International_Student_Assessment


Even though I am American, Its so sad that I can't help be be surprised that were not even lower than we are...

According to a "a survey of 1,500 European hotel managers conducted in April for Expedia.com" Americans are the best tippers. full article.

From the article:

Americans are the best tippers at Euro hotels, by far, the survey says. Also good at spreading around the pounds and euros -- Russians and Japanese. Least generous tippers: Germans, French, Israelis.

Americans also are considered the third most polite hotel guests, behind Japanese and British travelers.

Least polite, according to the survey: Russians, followed by Israelis and the French.

Who's best dressed: Italians, ahead of the French and Spanish.

Worst dressed: Oh dear. It's Americans, by far, followed by Brits and Germans. Maybe it's time to ditch the tell-tale baseball caps, baggy shorts, running shoes and T shirts.

And noisiest: Americans again, behind Italians.

http://www.newsweek.com/id/204874

rare day that newsweek has an article worth reading but I think we all know that the problems that japan has faced in it's "lost decade" are very similar to what the USA faces with the decline in trade. Oh, and happy 4th of july.

http://threatswatch.org/rapidrecon/2009/06/unimaginable-horror-in-tehran/

"An Iranian blogger (whose URL I will not publish) live blogging from Baharestan Square in central Tehran today captures but brief glimpses of the unimaginable horror that took place today. Bus loads of protesters were stopped and unloaded from their buses by "black-clad police" and literally herded. When the massing was sufficient, as the barely controllably distraught Tehran caller to CNN described first hand, hundreds of the regime's Basij thugs poured out of an adjoining mosque and commenced a massacre with axes, clubs, guns and gas."

Twitter:
"we must go - dont know when we can get internet - they take 1 of us, they will torture and get names - now we must move fast"

"Lalezar Sq is same as Baharestan - unbelevable - ppls murdered everywhere"

"they catch ppl with mobile - so many killed today - so many injured"

"in Baharestan we saw militia with axe choping ppl like meat - blood everywhere - like butcher"

"phone line was cut and we lost internet - getting more difficult to log into net"

"saw 7/8 militia beating one woman with baton on ground - she had no defense nothing - sure that she is dead"

"all hospitals is surrounded by militia to check why ppl going in - if gun or baton injury - they arrest and beat u"

"we have report of large street battles in east & west of Tehran now"

"It is just like living under martial law - u cannot go anywhere without being stoped or beaten by militia"

3 tir 1388 = 24 June 2009 Baharestan sq In Tehran, Iran
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-2W5GPmPR8o

There are now one thousand video submissions with the tag *media.
Is it time for a dedicated channel for this hot topic?

Horribly sad sad footage and situation. So sad that I watched it once and I do not want to ever see it again. Since then, I've seen about 100 videos on the sift of what appears to be the same thing. Since I don't want to watch it again, I can't really determine if these vids are technically dupes. In my opinion, there's no reason for having 4 videos of different close up angles, that would be exploitation. Furthermore, since the first one I saw posted, was taken down by the submitter because some of us agreed it was snuff, I don't see why others should be sifted. It's not fair to the orignal sifter...

If somebody could do a bit of dirty work for me, I've got some promotes in there for you. I know it's not much, but I think it'd benefit the sift in the long run...

&hearts
Rotten Marshy

EXTREMELY GRAPHIC
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bbdEf0QRsLM

"A young woman who was standing aside with her father watching the protests was shot by a basij member hiding on the rooftop of a civilian house. He had clear shot at the girl and could not miss her. However, he aimed straight her heart. I am a doctor, so I rushed to try to save her. But the impact of the gunshot was so fierce that the bullet had blasted inside the victim's chest, and she died in less than 2 minutes. The protests were going on about 1 kilometers away in the main street and some of the protesting crowd were running from tear gass used among them, towards Salehi St. The film is shot by my friend who was standing beside me. Please let the world know."

http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1906049,00.html

"Iran's revolution has now run through a full cycle. A gruesomely captivating video of a young woman — laid out on a Tehran street after apparently being shot, blood pouring from her mouth and then across her face

Some sites refer to her as "Neda," Farsi for the voice or the call.

Although it is not yet clear who shot "Neda", her death may have changed everything. For the cycles of mourning in Shiite Islam actually provide a schedule for political combat — a way to generate or revive momentum. Shiite Muslims mourn their dead on the third, seventh and 40th days after a death, and these commemorations are a pivotal part of Iran's rich history. During the revolution, the pattern of confrontations between the shah's security forces and the revolutionaries often played out in 40-day cycles."

Her and her father moments before the shooting:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2QPufN4RLH8

Yesterday, I got an email from a reader who had seen my story about Twitter users slamming CNN for its initial absence on the post-Iranian election protests, urging me to remove an image in the story.

The rationale? The image was of Twitter results and included users' account IDs, and the reader was worried that the Iranian government might seek out and punish any users who were employing Twitter for potentially subversive purposes.

We decided not to remove the image, in part because it had been up for more than 24 hours, and also because we suspected that the Iranian government knows how to use Twitter and how to find people in that country using the microblogging service as a way to spread news about the protests.

But now, Twitter users across the world are attempting to turn that dynamic on its head. The best way that the Iranian government could discover which tweets were from Iranians is to look and see whose accounts are registered to people who identify themselves as being from that country. That's possible because users' profiles allow people to define which city they're from and which time zone they're in.



http://news.cnet.com/8301-17939_109-10265462-2.html?tag=newsLatestHeadlinesArea.0

'We've had a few readers send in updates on the chaotic post-election situation in Iran. Twitter is providing better coverage than CNN at the moment. There are both tech and humanitarian angles to the story, as the two samples below illustrate.

First, Hugh Pickens writes with a report from The Times (UK) that

"the Iranian government is mounting a campaign to disrupt independent media organizations and Web sites that air doubts about the validity of the re-election of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as the nation's president. Reports from Tehran say that social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter were taken down after Mr Ahmadinejad claimed victory. SMS text messaging, a preferred medium of communication for young Iranians, has also been disabled. 'The blocking of access to foreign news media has been stepped up, according to Reporters Without Borders. 'The Internet is now very slow, like the mobile phone network. YouTube and Facebook are hard to access and pro-reform sites... are completely inaccessible.'"

And reader momen abdullah sends in one of the more disturbing Ask Slashdots you are likely to see.

"People, we need your urgent help in Iran. We are under attack by the government. They stole the election. And now are arresting everybody. They also filtered every sensitive Web page. But our problem is that they also block the SMS network and are scrambling satellite TVs. Please, can you help us to set up some sort of network using our home wireless access points? Can anybody show us a link on how to install small TV/radio stations? Any suggestion for setting up a network? Please tell us what to do or we are going to die in the a nuclear war between Iran and US."

http://ask.slashdot.org/story/09/06/14/183200/Iran-Moves-To-End-Facebook-Revolution?from=rss

Is it a revolution? Or just hype on twitter? Any news junkies on the sift wanna update us?

[small update]

Some of the (few!) media outlets reporting on the protests:

http://www.memeorandum.com/
http://blog.foreignpolicy.com/
http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/

Also, pajamasmedia has a list of the various crackdowns Ahmadinejad has made on the protests.

There are a number of popular shows that air on television that frequently make it on the sift and are region blocked --notably, The Daily Show, and The Colbert Report. Since the commentary of the hosts and content of the show is news based, it might be handy for those in region-blocked countries (Canada, other countries...) if the date of the episode was included in their descriptions for others to find in mirrored sites of country specific sites like thecomedynetwork.ca or other sources.

Though posting dates are always available, I thought this courtesy might also be useful with many news videos as well.

Thoughts?