That a 'nobody' like [Salam Pax] wound up providing a more nuanced view of his world - better than either the authoritarian inanities of the Iraqi information minister or the Geraldo-besotted dispatches of the commercial television networks - testifies both to the specific value of weblogging as well as to the broader impact the Internet may yet have around the world.
Charles Cooper

Strange Weather Lately

Vonnegut gets a few things off his chest . . .
Asked to speak as part of the Clemens Lecture Series at the Mark Twain House in Hartford, Connecticut, Kurt Vonnegut gave a speech (courtesy here of In These Times) in which he asked, What other American landmark is as sacred to me as the Mark Twain House? The Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C. Mark Twain and Abraham Lincoln were country boys from Middle America, and both of them made the American people laugh at themselves and appreciate really important, really moral jokes." Vonnegut then proceeded to launch a scathing attack of American conservatism, saying, What are the conservatives doing with all the money and power that used to belong to all of us? ... they have turned loose a myriad of our high–tech weapons, each one costing more than a hundred high schools, on a Third World country, in order to shock and awe human beings like us, like Adam and Eve, between the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers. ... Conservatives are crazy as bedbugs.
· They are bullies. [ InTheseTimes]