You can’t have it both ways! In this article about the North Korean crisis, she is quoted as having said (last Sunday), “We cannot allow the North Koreans to step back into a bilateral discussion with the United States.” Suggesting, of course, that the UN Security Council has to be the body through which the world must communicate with the North Koreans. Meanwhile, of course, she’s at the head of the group doing the most to destroy the Security Council with snide comments and thinly-veiled disdain for a process that she doens’t seem to like.
Archives for February 2003
The New York Times has published
a classy version of the Blogger story: Google Deal Ties Company to Weblogs. It’s nice to see that both founders of Pyra are cited.
Not sure what this does:
Cory Doctorow has published
a great analysis of the Google acquisition of Blogger at Boing Boing today. “Google’s made a business out of this sort of research. Its PageRank algorithm is the best idea-diffusion-miner we’ve got right now, and in hindsight, Google’s move into blogs seems inevitable.”
There are quite a few (other) people who seem very concerned that this is a negative move, a drive to control weblogging as an endeavour, or that it will certainly game the rankings in the search engine. It’s pretty clear to me though that there’s no way this is a bad thing. Google has proven time and time again that they have a lot of respect for the internet and a near-obsessive desire to stay “legit” both in fact and in perception. Given that, I can’t see this as anything but a terrific bit of news for all webloggers, whether using Blogger or other systems.
After watching the news shows
this morning I’m left with the disquieting feeling that in several years it will be clear to everyone that the current administration in the US made a series of huge, obvious strategic and tactical political errors during this escalation of the Iraq question. Already, it’s clear that the administration has totally blown it. The new push against Iraq should have been a slam dunk! No one in the world – not the French, not the Germans, not the peaceniks worldwide – supports Saddam Hussein. No one thinks Iraq is a peaceful, misunderstood country that should just be left alone. No one (pretty much) disagrees that something had to be done or that the status quo was sustainable.
Nonetheless, here we are, a day after millions of people worldwide demonstrated against the current administrations’s actions. How has this come to pass? How did this go from a slam-dunk, an obvious “must-do” to a situation that risks the destruction of the UN, the end of NATO, and a comprehensible trashing of the United States’ reputation as a legitimate world leader?
How can it be anything less than a massive public relations AND policy failure on the part of the Bush administration? They have lied, they have shamefully disrespected almost everyone other than Britain on the world stage, they have insulted friends and foes alike, and paid nothing but lip service to anyone and everyone who might frame their paranoid rantings in a structure that can legitimately take action that would meet with wide approval.
That, barring the unforeseen horrors that may still confront us, will be the legacy of George W Bush.
