'The fight on Main Street'

It's hardly surprising that we've seen no updates from Raed in Baghdad since the "shock and awe" campaign began yesterday. Still, I keep checking, hoping for word that he and his family are still OK.

My kindergarten teacher, Mrs. Buckner, must have been particularly interested in journalism. At least one of her students went into that line of work, and so did her daughter. Jennie Buckner is now not only executive editor of the Charlotte Observer, but a leader in the civic journalism movement and one of the most respected executives in the field. We're about the same age, but I didn't meet Jennie until about 20 years ago, when she was assistant managing editor for features at the San Jose Mercury-News and I was interviewing for a job there. She didn't hire me — and I thank her for that now — but we had a very nice talk — I thank her for that, too — two people who grew up in the same small but extraordinary town, both professional interviewers and chronic if not compulsive question-askers. I was reminded of that conversation with Jennie when the B-52s began dropping their gee-whiz-guided loads over Baghdad yesterday and all the world's attention was drawn to that lethal fireworks display.

"What about television?" I asked Jennie that day. CNN was just a pup then, and people were still in the habit of looking to newspapers for their news. Did she see that as a threat?

"It's the fight on Main Street," she said, and I apologize for the direct quotes here, as I took no notes and have no recording of that conversation, except for the intense imprint it made in my brain. "Imagine a town with no newspapers, no TV, no news or entertainment media at all," she said. "Now imagine that a fight breaks out one night on that town's Main street. That's what gets everybody's attention; that's what they're all talking about. For us, television isn't a competitor. It's the fight on Main Street."

In a more complex world, of course, the fight on Main Street is only one of many news stories to watch. But when most of most news organizations' resources are deployed along with the troops in war, some of those other stories get overlooked.

One of those was the death of Lenore Gould Breslauer, peace activist during the Vietnam War and one of the founders of the activist group Another Mother for Peace, best known for its logo and slogan, "War is not healthy for children and other living things". Her daughter, Nancy Chuda, and her son, Jon Gould, also dedicated their lives to peace and social causes.

Another underplayed news item was the passage of the Bush budget, including tax cut but with no mention of any spending for the war now under way, by the Republican-controlled House of Representatives. Meanwhile, in the other side of our nation's bicameral legislature, our Senator and neighbor Jon Corzine, who as you may have heard had quite a bit of experience, and success, in the world of finance before he decided to try his hand at government work, was absolutely appalled by the budget. "This is not speculation," Corzine said in a TV interview. "We know we have this expense, but there's no provision for it in the budget. That kind of accounting makes even Enron look responsible." As you may have heard if you've watched any Ari Fleisher briefing in the past few months, we'll find out how much the war will cost only in "supplementals," requests tacked onto the budget after the fact. In these briefings, the White House press corps plays the part of the Greek chorus, asking "How much is this going to cost?" "When are you going to tell us?" "Don't you think the American people have a right to know now?" "You've got to have some estimates somewhere. Somebody has to have done the math on this. So why not share it with us?" and a cacaphony of related questions, while Fleisher says something like this: "the administration would send up a supplemental appropriation bill to the Congress. And so Congress will then have at its disposal all the relevant facts and figures to make the determinations for their budget issues;" or "War cost -- in terms of the supplemental, the President has said that after hostilities begin, a supplemental will be sent to the Hill. That remains operative." Corzine led the successful 52-47 Democratic charge to trim the Republican tax cut to put $100 billion in reserve for war costs, i.e., support our troops. 

That was just an amendment; the Senate has yet to pass the budget. Republicans are hoping to get the full tax cut restored, with no reserve for war costs, when the House/Senate conference committee works to resolve differences between the House and Senate versions of the budget later this month.

In other news, as our favorite clothing store, Eddie Bauer, goes bankrupt, and more and more companies, especially airlines, are facing the same fate, the House has passed an anti-bankruptcy bill that gives big business everything it asked for, and if passed by the Senate, would make it even closer to impossible for people who've lost jobs to get health insurance, or for parents who are owed back child support to get anything from their delinquent ex-spouses.

And in case anyone was wondering just how ignorant, childish, and cruel some people can be, consider the poor Lebanese immigrant in Fresno, California, who chose the name "French Cleaners" for his business on a whim, using the Eiffel Tower as its logo. All three branches of French cleaners were vandalized in what police are calling a hate crime, with a fire causing more than $500,000 in damage, obscenities scrawled on the wall and bullet holes in the windows.

This just in from The New York Times: 28 baby girls, all under 3 months old, were discovered in suitcases on a bus in southern China, "apparently being smuggled for sale." One has already died.

We now return you to the fight on Main Street, already in progress.

B-52s over Baghdad

But no U.S. flag over captured Iraqi port

"A U.S. official has confirmed that a major air war has begun," — ITV news anchor, informing the network's Baghdad correspondent, Ian Glover-James, who was surprised to hear that because all was calm as far as he could see.

"The Pentagon confirms that 'shock and awe' has begun. — CNN

Blogspot's unofficial Baghdad correspondent, Raed, checked in with another brief dispatch this morning, just after the U.S. Air Force B-52s took off from British airfields on their way to bomb Iraq. Raed's bloggings have a growing readership, thanks to recommendations not only from The Dagley Dagley Daily, but from Newsday, ZDNet, The San Francisco Chronicle, and the Online Journalism Review, and MSNBC, among others. There's even one called The Blogs of War. Here in New Jersey, NJ.com's Jeff Jarvis is blogging the war.

Yes, they've taken down the flag raised by invading U.S. Marines over the captured port of Umm Qasr. The British Sky News report says "no reason was given for the decision, but Washington has consistently stressed that invading forces want to liberate Iraq, not occupy it."

The destruction we're watching, and hearing, will eventually lead to rebuilding, which is big business, especially for the handful of American companies, including Halliburton (which Vice President Dick Cheney headed before he went back into government work), that have already received contracts (flag or no flag) from the U.S. Agency for International Development.

Here are a few of many headlines about that from:

The Charlotte Observer: War to Profit U.S. Firms

The Dallas Business Journal: Texas oil industry set to profit from Iraq war

The Boston Globe: U.S. is accused of hoarding contracts to rebuild

The Guardian, UK: U.S. firms get $1.5 billln deal to rebuild Iraq

An excerpt from the Guardian article: "A subsidiary of Halliburton, the firm formerly headed by the US vice-president, Dick Cheney, is a member of one of four consortia whose bids were invited in a secret process last month. Several of the firms are major Republican party donors."

The BBC: The business of rebuilding war zones

("I just want to make sure our viewers know what's going on," Wolf Blitzer just said. Similarly, I just want to make sure my readers know what's going on, so we now return you to the list of articles about the business of rebuilding.)

The Scotsman: US offers to rebuild post-war Iraq greeted with scorn by rebels

McClatchy News Service: Senators feel out of the loop of postwar plans

Dow Jones: Bush Has Audacious Plan to Rebuild Iraq Within Year

Washington Post: U.S. Set to Award 7 Contracts for Rebuilding of Iraq, Initial Work Will Go to American Firms

The Tallahassee Democrat: Corporate America divvies up the post-Saddam spoils

Forbes: Senators bash Pentagon for postwar Iraq secrecy

The Globe and Mail, Toronto, Canada: U.S. firms to lead rebuilding effort

The New York Times/International Herald Tribune: As U.S. firms poise to reap Iraq spoils, British rivals worry, U.S. business to reap most of the profit in rebuilding

SmartMoney.com: Oil-Services Firms May Hit Jackpot in Post-War Iraq

The Denver Post: GOP-linked firms already lining up to rebuild Iraq

The Palm Beach Post: Might might make right. Right?

Molly Ivins, Creators Syndicate, in The Salt Lake Tribune: Bush Would Have Well-Connected American Firms Overhaul Iraqi Society

The Age, Australia: Corporate US to rebuild Iraq

The Independent, UK: First deals to rebuild Iraq will go only to US firms

The Nation: Military Globalism

Guess we've got no reason to worry, then, about what effect the attack on Iraq, and the terrorism and further wars that are almost sure to follow, will have on our economy. Maybe we oughta update that 20th-century cliche, "What's good for General Motors is good for the country," as there are some who obviously believe that what's good for Halliburton is good for the world. 

"The West won the world not by the superiority of its ideas or values or religion but rather by its superiority in applying organized violence. Westerners often forget this fact, non- Westerners never do."

Samuel P. Huntington, author of The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order

War! Good God, y'all!

Armies of analysts all over the world are putting on their makeup and going on the air to tell us what we're seeing in what is expected to be the most-watched event in world history. If you'd rather just watch and figure out for yourself what it all means, Reuters is offering a raw video feed, without narration, play-by-play, or color commentary, free online at Reuters.feedroom.com.

And for the perspective of an Iraqi citizen there in Baghdad, check out the bloggings of my Blogspot neighbor Raed. I don't know Raed, but I found his blog this morning via Daypop, a dandy search engine for news that sorts through more than 17,000 web news sites and weblogs. The better-known, more popular News Google only distills its news items from about 4,500 sources. Neither uses human editors, and the programs that sort through the news are oblivious to both nationality and proximity. If you're looking at stories about something happening in Chicago, for example, the top item in that category may be from a newspaper in Australia or India.

Raed was still posting after the initial attack, and follow-up, on his city, which means he still had electricity as of 10:33 p.m, his time, today. I'll be checking his blog often in the coming days, hoping for more updates.

Meanwhile, from the world of radio, an unusual programming note from Israeli radio:

<<"Quiet Radio" to begin broadcasting on Radio 1 tonight (19 March 2003)

Israel Radio announced that starting tonight "quiet radio" will begin
broadcasting on Radio 1(Reshet Aleph)  starting tonight at 10:00 PM.
The station will broadcast a clear silence (so that it is possible to
sleep with it on, etc.). In the event of an alert, Radio 1 will
broadcast a siren and then instructions.>>

I hope that nothing but the sounds of silence comes from that station tonight, and every night. Meanwhile, I hope Raed's blog doesn't fall silent. In both cases, I fear otherwise.