Newley.com: An American Living and Teaching English in Kaohsiung, Taiwan

More on Moore
Anti-Michael Moore sentiment is growing. As I mentioned earlier, I admire Moore's populist bent, and I agree with him on many issues. But I thought his most recent film, "Bowling for Columbine," was over the top; Moore's titanic ego interfered with his arguments.

There's evidence that more people are growing annoyed with him. Although the movie recently won an Oscar for best documentary (and Moore made an anti-war speech as he accepted the award), David Hardy claims, in an exhaustive report, that the film is so full of half-truths that it isn't actually a documentary:

Bowling makes its points by deceiving and by misleading the viewer. Statements are made which are false. Moore invites the reader to draw inferences which he must have known were wrong. Indeed, even speeches shown on screen are heavily edited, so that sentences are assembled in the speaker's voice, but which he never uttered.

And Moore has also been dissed by the the New York Press, who recently assigned him to the number three spot on their list of the 50 Most Loathsome New Yorkers.

Finally, though I'm far from impressed with the intellectual rigor of the arguments posited by its readers, there's MooreWatch.com, a site unveiled several months ago.

War Stuff
1) What does the Bush administration have in mind for the Middle East once Hussein is toppled? Joshua Micah Marshall argues that the Bush hawks want widespread and long-term conflict with the fundamentalist Arab world--and that our attack on Iraq is just the start of our military action:

In their view, invasion of Iraq was not merely, or even primarily, about getting rid of Saddam Hussein. Nor was it really about weapons of mass destruction, though their elimination was an important benefit. Rather, the administration sees the invasion as only the first move in a wider effort to reorder the power structure of the entire Middle East.

It's a compelling, scary article. And in related news, yesterday Don Rumsfeld had some threatening words for Syria and Iran, who he said are providing aid to Iraq. Was this an opening rhetorical volley? Does the Pentagon think it might not be such a bad idea to go after Syria and Iran, too?

2) After learning that the Iraqis showed images of American POWs on TV, Rumsfeld said, "it is against the Geneva convention to show photographs of prisoners of war in a manner that is humiliating for them."

Lemme get this straight: we're invading a sovereign nation without the support of the international community and dropping bombs on people's heads. And Rumsfeld expects Iraqis to play by the rules. Not to mention the fact that we've got 641 POWs--er, "unlawful combatants"--imprisoned down in Guantanamo Bay. They've been given no legal rights whatsoever.

3) Every death that has come about as a result of this war is a tragedy. And while we hear about it whenever an American or Brit is killed, it's easy to forget that Iraqi civilians are dying, too. Here's a Web site that keeps tabs on exactly how many have perished.

I'm Back from Peru
I'm back in Cuenca. It's good to be home. My friend and I arrived here last night. Classes start again on Monday.

FlubTitles
My friend Jordan, who's an extremely talented medical illustrator, it must be said, just sent me a funny site via her hilarious pal Pete. The site is FlubTitles--an amusing compilation of Engrish subtitles from Hong Kong D VDs.

And I can now say this with complete assurance: this moment, right now as I'm writin g this, is the first time I've ever sat in a Web cafe in northern Peru and pondered East Asian linguistic gaffes.

More Links to War Coverage
I'm still in Peru. At the beach with my friend Mike. Waiting for the Ecuadorian consulate to process our long-term visa applications so we can continue traveling and then return to Cuenca. There're worse places to be stranded, of course. So I can't complain.

I've been using the Web to follow the war. The best sites I've found are: 1) Command Post, a frequently-updated Weblog with links to breaking stories; and 2) CyberJournalist, which features links to reporters maintaining Weblogs. The conventional news sites, like Yahoo News and CNN and the New York Times, are okay. But they don't provide the breath of coverage that blogs offer.

Following the War from Rural Peru
It's strange following the war in Iraq from rural Peru. I don't have access to a TV, and Web connections are slow and sometimes elusive. Nick Denton, though, has put together a nice collection of Web sites posting reliable and up-to-date war news.

Report From Mancora, Peru
I've been in Mancora, Peru for the last few days. I had to leave Ecuador and re-enter the country in order to apply for a long-term visa, so I decided to travel for a week or so before returning.

Mancora's a sleepy little beach town on Peru's northern coast; lots of sun, good seafood, and plenty of relaxation. My friend and I might head down to Lima next and then make our way back to Ecuador. But we're not sure yet.

A War of Choice
So we're going to war.

The Bush administration can claim, despite the overwhelming lack of evidence, that Iraq has ties to Al Qaeda. Tom Friedman can argue that this is a legitimate war waged incorrectly, one that will reform fundamentalist Muslim states that are breeding terrorists. Others can posit that removing Hussein will further the peace process in Israel and stablize the Middle East.

In the end, though, this much is true: the United States is embarking on a war of choice. A war that doesn't have to happen. 18-year-old kids from Detroit and Dallas and Harlem and Los Angeles, along with countless Iraqi civilians, will lose their lives unnecessarily over the coming weeks. And that's sad.

The SELA Foundation
Last week, my friend Mike introduced me to the friendly, hard-working folks at The SELA Foundation, which is based here in Cuenca. SELA is involved in legal services, human rights, and conflict resolution for marginalized groups in rural and suburban Southern Ecuador. I look forward to learning more about their work.

I've finally gotten around to scanning in some photos of my various adventures here. In mostly chronological order, here goes:

--Me jumping over a fire on New Year's Eve (a local tradition)

--Some Ecuadorian friends jumping over the same fire on New Year's Eve

--An Ecuadorian guy dressed in drag on New Year's Eve (also a local tradition)

--A cool trashcan (foreground) and a mother and son (background) in Gualaceo

--An impromptu jam session at a favorite Cuenca restaurant

--Me towering over some girls in Quito

--A really nice photo (if I do say so myself) of a funeral here in Cuenca (I wouldn't have taken if I knew then that it was a funeral)

--A photo of me and my fellow TEFL classmates in Cajas National Park (yes, I'm wearing ridiculous red pants--and I've got a great story about a wild bull we encountered while backpacking there: he gazed at my trousers for some time; I was nervous)

--Me backpacking in Cajas National Park

--My friend Mike posing next to a bed in a very bad hostal in Riobamba

--Self portrait taken atop our bus on the way to Canoa

--Me at the beach in Canoa

--Me and a food vendor atop the famous "Nariz del Diablo" (Devil's Nose) train (not sure who the guy in the back is)

--Sideways photo of the Nariz del Diablo riders

--A postcard of Cuenca (home sweet home)

"The Plague We Can't Escape"
Larry Kramer, writing in the New York Times, notes that 50 million people around the world are infected with HIV, and that "in China, Ethiopia, India, Nigeria and Russia, the number of AIDS cases is predicted to double by 2 010, with a total of 50 million to 75 million infected people in those countries alone." Kramer says we shouldn't allow drug companies to keep life-saving and life-prolonging drugs from people who need them.

CNN.com and Sharks
Last November, I wrote about the fact that CNN.com was supporting shark aggression hype (remember the "summer of the shark"?) by reporting, on their front page, about an attack. This despite evidence that falling coconuts kill many more people each year. The news business, of course, is just that: the business of supplying compelling content, sometimes at the expense of logic.

Yesterday, CNN.com ran a story with the headline "Survey: 'Shark summer' bred fear, not facts." The piece includes this paragraph:

"The media coverage was prompted by a bull shark biting off the arm of an 8-year-old boy on a Florida beach July 6, 2001. Overnight, shark bites and sightings became major international news, triggering countless TV news reports and front-page stories and culminating in the Weekly World News tabloid declaring: 'Castro trained killer sharks to attack U.S.'"

Okay, so the Castro shark story is ridiculous and hilarious. But too bad no mention was made in this article that CNN itself was part of the media's own feeding frenzy.

Civil War Ninjas
"So, then, on to your central thesis. I certainly can't dispute your assertion that the presence of ninjas at Gettysburg would have altered the outcome of the U.S. Civil War. However, it is one thing to make this statement and quite another to claim that a clan of ninjas indeed was present and was, in fact, the force that tipped the balance of power in the war to the Union. Your evidence is... scanty."

From Civil War Ninjas! The Tenth-Grade History Report (via Reenhead).

Thanks for Clarifying That
Lockhart Steele points out a very funny, very odd New York Times correction.

"Bowling for Columbine"
Michael Moore, the populist film documentarian, has won a Freedom of Speech award at the US Comedy Arts Festival.

His most recent film, "Bowling for Columbine," about American gun culture, really got under my skin, and my reaction to it really surprised me. I'm very much anti-guns. But Moore's movie rubbed me the wrong way: his ego, in the film, got in the way of his message, and he often seemed more concerned with making himself look smart than in making a rational argument--he loves to put celebrities on the spot and ask them clever questions designed to make them look bad, for example.

Moore's overly-simplistic ethos--that minorities are always good and white people are always bad, that poor people are necessarily oppressed and rich people are necessarily the oppressors, and that all big corporations are evil--gets in the way of the fascinating subject of the movie: why we love guns so much in America, and why we shoot each other all the time.

"Bowling for Columbine" is a well-made, interesting documentary. I just wish Michael Moore didn't think he should be its subject.

Ecuador and Drugs
NarcoNews.com, an odd, grassroots-style Web site devoted to drug news from Latin America (and decidedly in favor of decriminalization), recently published an interview with Fernando Buendia, leader of the Pachakutik Movement. It's a thought-provoking piece.

Dowd on Dubya
Maureen Dowd writes well, but her rhetoric is sometimes over the top. In her latest column, though, she makes this excellent observation:

"It still confuses many Americans that, in a world full of vicious slimeballs, we're about to bomb one that didn't attack us on 9/11 (like Osama); that isn't intercepting our planes (like North Korea); that isn't financing Al Qaeda (like Saudi Arabia); that isn't home to Osama and his lieutenants (like Pakistan); that isn't a host body for terrorists (like Iran, Lebanon and Syria)."

She forgot one nation, though: Colombia, where FARC rebels are holding American military contractors hostage at this very moment.

NaNoHuh?
Although the world surely doesn't need any more mediocre novels, I've always admired the spirit--the camaraderie, the forced creative production--of National Novel Writing Month, or NaNoWriMo. So maybe National Novel Editing Month is a good idea. Too bad the latter (in March) doesn't immediately follow the former (in November).

"The Balloon Goes Up"
The Economist reports on "Plan Colombia"--the US's attempts to curb coca cultivation in Colombia, Peru, and Bolivia. "But the 'drug war' has imposed its own costs. One is known as the 'balloon effect': local squeezes simply move the industry elsewhere, spreading violence and corruption with it."

"Russian Fat Cat Creams the Rest"
Here's one big feline.

I Spent a Week in Loja Sunday Night
We had yesterday and Monday off school for Carnaval. So on Sunday, I decided to bus six hours south to Vilcabamba, a sleepy little resort town.

It was not to be, however: in Loja, where I'd planned to spend the night, I fell ill. Ate something bad.

So I spent Sunday night holed up in Loja's none-too-Parisian Hotel Paris. By Monday afternoon, I was feeling better, but still didn't feel like making the journey back here to Cuenca (and by then, I didn't have time to continue on to Vilcabamba). So I stayed in Loja on Monday night, too.

Finally, I boarded a homebound bus yesterday. Only problem: I didn't know it, but I'd bought a standing-room-only ticket; I spent the last three hours on my feet in the aisle.

But now I'm better. And as they say here in Ecuador, "asi es la vida." That's life.

The World Economic Forum and "Accidental Privacy Spills"
My friend Colin emailed me a couple of fascinating links. The first is this--the text of a private email that a well-respected journalist, Laurie Garrett, sent to a group of friends after attending the recent World Economic Forum. The message, informally written and full of behind-the-scenes observations that are clearly not meant for public consumption, makes for an informative read.

But more interesting, it turns out, is what happened in the weeks after Garrett hit the send button. The message was forwarded on to scores of people, as remarkable emails so often are, and it wound up being automatically archived on the Web. Then the email was linked to, analyzed, and (sometimes cruelly) deconstructed on MetaFilter, a Weblog and message board.

When several people emailed Garrett to verify the authenticity of her musings, she eventually confirmed that she had, indeed, penned the missive. And then she launched a stunning tirade that 1) displays a shockingly naive view of how information spreads virally via email, and 2) is full of righteous indignation: she's mad at the Internet community, and MetaFilter users in particular, for disregarding her privacy.

For an in-depth look at the various dimensions of the situation, see "Accidental Privacy Spills:" Musings on Privacy, Democracy, and the Internet.

Saddam, Don. Don, Saddam.
Here's a photo of Donald Rumsfeld shaking hands with Saddam Hussein in 1983. Lest we forget, the Reagan Administration loved Hussein when he was fighting Iran in the early eighties.