Crashed C-17: that'll buff right out, sir!

This isn’t the first time this kind of incident has happened at Bagram.  In October a P-3 Orion crashed after overshooting the runway, and the Navy quickly relieved the Commander (who was piloting the plane) of his post.  Only a week or so before this latest incident, the overshoot of a C-17 at Bagram resulted in minor damage and caused only limited disruption — but in 2005, another C-17 (tail #01-0196) was very nearly written-off after overshooting the runway, causing extensive damage (see below).

C-17 at Bagram in 2005: another fixer-upper

The 2005 crash resulted in a fairly remarkable recovery and restoration.  The plane was very nearly considered for a writeoff, however it was made (barely) airworthy by Boeing technicians on the airfield and then hopscotched back to Long Beach for an extensive reconditioning.  It has been flying again since the summer of 2006.

Bagram, an ex-soviet base built during that country’s (understatement) expedition in Afghanistan, is a forward operating airfield run by the US Army in a rather hotly-contested area of the country.  This means that it primarily supports A-10 attack aicraft as well as the Army’s usual complement of AH-64, UH-60, and CH-47 helicopters.  In 2007 an ambitious suicide bombing attack against the Bagram airfield claimed 23 dead and might have killed Dick Cheney while he was on a special morale-depleting visit.  That said, a town has now built up around the airfield and the base itself is considered relatively secure.

A number of other pilots have criticized aircrews of the C-17 and other non-attack aircraft of “flying hard” and using “combat zone” landing techniques when coming into Bagram.  This means landing hard, low, and fast and would certainly explain many of the overshoots.  Whatever the cause, in order to mitigate the overshoots and to make the field more usable by larger aircraft, the runway was extended in 2006 after the 2005 C-17 overshoot (C-17s can land in as little as 3,500 feet, and after the 2006 lengthening Bagram’s main (and only usable) runway is 11,000 feet long).  However, the overshoots have persisted.

The cautionary note on Bagram’s pilot’s briefing is pretty benign (for a combat airfield):

Ctl explosions and de-mining ops in vcnty of arpt, ATC will advise. Acft opr blw FL210 may experience a loss of rdo and/or radar ctc with Bagram ATC at dist greater than 30 NM. MPN-25 (ASR/PAR) PMI Mon-Fri 1930-2130Z. Hi potential for hydroplanning when rwy sfc is wet. Rwy in advanced state of decay, increased possibility of FOD. Avoid ovft 1/2 mile NE dep end Rwy 03, burn pit will cause inadvertent flare dispersal. tkof obstacle rwy 03 4900′ MSL ant , 599′ fr DER, 510′ leftof cntrln. Lit twr, 120′ AGL, Rwy 03 apch end 1,250 ft E of cntrln. Lit twr, 120′ AGL, 1,250 ‘ E of cntrln midfield Rwy 03/21. Poss 1/2 rwy width clsd for const, ctc App for status. Twy H btn twys B and E is 44 ft wide. Acft use inboard eng only to reduce FOD.

It goes on to warn that if the airfield is under attack, you should stay above 25,000 feet; and avoid flying below 1000 feet West of the airfield or you could get shot down by US air defenses.  :)   That said, though, for a C-17 to come in to Bagram these days doesn’t seem to be particularly challenging, unless you fly over the burn pit and your anti-SAM flares go off from the heat.  Baghdad’s briefing is a little more frightening.

Concerningly, the peanut gallery seems to think that this particular air crew failed to follow their checklist in the heat of .. erm .. battle and essentially forgot to deploy the landing gear.  It will take some time in order to figure that out of course, but C-17s are outfitted with cockpit voice recorders and if the pilots have anything to hide, news will come out soon enough.  Others have pointed out that hot-dogging it into Bagram is becoming a bit too commonplace.

The briefing above does contain a bit of a nugget, though:  “use inboard eng only to reduce FOD”.  In other words, pilots are instructed to run outboard engines at idle in order to prevent them from sucking in debris from the outer edges of the runway and adjacent desert (thought this might apply only to taxiing).  As Global Security points out, the thrust reversers are an integral part of the C-17’s ability to land in short distances –and if pilots are coming in hot but only using inboard thrust reversers to slow down upon landing, they’ve got 50% less thrust to use in braking.  That’s a problem.  Maybe our most recent celebrity C-17 crew just figured the easiest way to slow down in a short distance was to retract the landing gear.

In the meantime, Canada now has 4 C-17s, designated the CC-177.  If one of ours were to crash at Kandahar while the pilots were playing “Top Gun” the consequences would be disastrous to the Canadian military’s mobility, and to its budget.  Both of the badly damaged C-17s hail from Charleston, South Carolina.  Let’s hope that if the “hot-dogging” allegations have any merit, that our guys are a little more Formula One, and a little less NASCAR.

UPDATE: Welcome trolls from Charleston!  Your comments will be approved (see below)…

UPDATE 2/22: New photos popped up last week from the night of the crash… some interesting details were revealed.

The UN Security Council vetoed the invasion of Iraq and thus the UN did not support it, yet it realized its mandate and went into Iraq anyway hoping to help restore order…

Actually, the UN already had an envoy and an HQ in Iraq which went surprisingly unscathed for more than a decade, even during Clinton’s bombing of tactical targets and aggressive UN weapons inspections. This unprecedented act of violence further underscores the Bush Administration’s total failure to understand the backscatter effects of their actions.

They are losing the political war and they are losing it FAST.

-Ian.

—– http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cidW8&ncidW8&e=3&u=/nm/ 20030819/ts_nm/iraq_un_death_dc UN in Mourning as Baghdad Bombing Wreaks Heavy Toll 1 hour, 11 minutes ago By Irwin Arieff

UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) – The most devastating attack ever on a U.N. facility killed the chief U.N. envoy to Iraq ( news -web sites ) and at least 15 staff in Baghdad and stunned the global body at its headquarters on Tuesday with dazed staff roaming the corridors, some weeping.

Dazed staff wept as televisions displayed grim pictures of the devastation at the main U.N. office building in Iraq, where some 300 of their colleagues worked. Many were still trapped in the wreckage and the death toll was sure to climb, officials said.

The flags of the United Nations ( news -web sites )’ 191 member-nations, which adorn the front of the U.N. compound on Manhattan’s East Side, were lowered and the blue-and-white U.N. flag was put at half-staff to honor the dead.

U.N. officials said they believed the office of Sergio Vieira de Mello, the U.N. Special Representative for Iraq, had been the target of the suicide truck bombing.

U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan ( news -web sites ) called his death “a bitter blow for the United Nations and for me personally.”

“The death of any colleague is hard to bear but I could think of no one we could less spare,” Annan, who was on vacation in Helsinki, said in a statement issued in New York, as he canceled his vacation after news of the attack.

In a series of senior posts including U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights and special envoy in such hot spots as Kosovo and East Timor ( news -web sites ), “he impressed everyone with his charm, his energy and his ability to get things done, not by force but by diplomacy and persuasion,” Annan said.

The debonair Vieira de Mello, a 55-year-old Brazilian ( news -web sites ), had often been mentioned as a possible future U.N. secretary-general.

BLAST WILL NOT BREAK U.N. WILL

“Nothing can excuse this act of unprovoked and murderous violence against men and women who went to Iraq for one purpose only: to help the Iraqi people recover their independence and sovereignty, and to rebuild their country as fast as possible, under leaders of their own choosing,” Annan said.

“All of us at the United Nations are shocked and dismayed by today’s attack, in which many of our colleagues have been injured and an unknown number have lost their lives,” he said, expressing the hope that those responsible would be swiftly identified and brought to justice.

“Most of all I hope to see Iraq restored as soon as possible to peace, security and full independence. The United Nations will make every effort to bring that about,” he said.

The 15-nation Security Council affirmed the blast would not deter the world body from its work rebuilding Iraq.

“Such terrorist incidents cannot break the will of the international community to further intensify its efforts to help the people of Iraq,” council members said in a statement read by Deputy U.N. Ambassador Fayssal Mekdad of Syria, the Security Council president for August.

Treading a diplomatic and political minefield in Iraq, Vieira de Mello had quickly won the respect of Paul Bremer, Iraq’s U.S. administrator, despite tension between Washington and the U.N. Secretariat over the war, officials said.

“The relationship has been businesslike, it has been constructive, and it has been frank,” Vieira de Mello, told reporters in Cairo last week. But he agreed he had landed in “a delicate … and even bizarre situation” in postwar Iraq.

In an address to the U.N. Security Council in July, he made what now appears a prescient remark, saying, “The United Nations presence in Iraq remains vulnerable to any who would seek to target our organization.”

-Ian.

Begin forwarded message:

> From: Tom
> Date: Fri Aug 1, 2003 9:32:24 AM US/Pacific
> To: fork [at] xent [dot] com
> Subject: Can You Here Me Now
>
>> From http://www.arstechnica.com/
>
> Middle East mobile firm shut out in Iraq
>
> Posted 8/1/2003 – 2:09AM, by Fred “zAmboni” Locklear
> Getting a foot in the door can lead to opportunities, but it can also
> lead
> to some squashed toes. Using the confusion in a Iraq as a cover screen
> the
> Bahriani mobile firm Batelco spent $5 million setting up and beginning
> GSM
> service in Baghdad on July 22. One problem. Batelco had not obtained a
> license to start services and promptly told to cease service. The U.S.
> started seeking bids for three mobile phone licenses on Sunday, so
> Betelco
> could just apply, right? Watch out toes, here comes the crunch.
>
> Batelco was probably trying to get the jump on others since licensing
> rules had not been set up and there have been rumblings the U.S. would
> craft rules to favor other U.S. companies. It was a $5 million gamble
> that
> could have been parlayed into a lucrative mobile license and contract.
> On
> Thursday, rules were set up for Iraqi mobile phone licenses and
> Batelco,
> along with some of Europe’s largest mobile companies will be left out
> of
> the bidding.
>
> ” The rules – issued by the coalition authorities ahead of a
> bidders’
> conference in Jordan on Thursday – ban governments from “directly
> or
> indirectly own(ing) more than 5% of any single bidding company or
> single company in consortia”.
>
> That rules out – among others – Orange and T-Mobile, two of
> Europe’s
> biggest operators, because the French and German governments still
> own
> significant stakes in their parent companies.”
>
> The BBC also suggests the rules have stipulations which will favor U.S.
> companies. The restrictions could be seen as preventing a government
> from
> having influence over services provided to Iraq. On the other hand, one
> could argue companies from coalition nations should be barred,
> especially
> since they are the ones setting up the rules.
>
> [1]http://www.bayarea.com/mld/mercurynews/news/special_packages/iraq/
> 6402112.htm
> [2]http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/3114591.stm
>

Sometimes I can’t believe what I read..

-Ian.

——— http://www.msnbc.com/news/944890.asp?0cl=cR&cp1=1

BAGHDAD, Iraq, July 28 —  Over the past six weeks a small but intense war has been conducted in the mud-hut villages and lush palm groves along the Tigris River valley, fought with far different methods than those used in the campaign that toppled President Saddam Hussein.

AS IRAQI FIGHTERS launched guerrilla strikes, the U.S. Army adopted a more nimble approach against unseen adversaries, and found new ways to gather intelligence about them, according to dozens of soldiers and officers interviewed over the last week.        Thousands of suspected Iraqi fighters were detained over the six-week period, many temporarily, in hundreds of U.S. military raids, most of them conducted in the dead of night. In the expansive region north of Baghdad patrolled by the 4th Infantry Division, more than 300 Iraqi fighters were killed in combat operation, the military officials said. In the same period, U.S. forces in all of Iraq have suffered 39 combat deaths. The continuing casualties — such as the four soldiers killed Saturday — are the direct result of the intensified U.S. offensive, the military officials added.        Despite their losses, Army officers and soldiers asserted that they are making solid gains in this region, where most of the fighting has taken place and where about half the 150,000 U.S. troops in the country are posted.        At the beginning of June, before the U.S. offensives began, the reward for killing an American soldier was about $300, an Army officer said. Now, he said, street youths are being offered as much as $5,000 — and are being told that if they refuse, their families will be killed, a development the officer described as a sign of reluctance among once-eager youths to take part in the strikes.

       At the same time, the frequency of attacks has declined in the area northwest of Baghdad dominated by Iraq’s Sunni minority, long a base of support for Hussein. In this triangle-shaped region — delineated by Baghdad, Tikrit to the north and the towns of Fallujah and Ramadi to the west — attacks on U.S. forces have dropped by half since mid-June, military officers reported.        That decrease is leading senior commanders here to debate whether the war is nearly over. Some say the resistance by members of Hussein’s Baath Party is nearly broken. But other senior officers are bracing for a new phase in which they fear that Baathist die-hards, with no alternative left, will shift from attacking the U.S. military to bombing American civilians and Iraqis who work with them.        In addition, there is general agreement among Army leaders here that in recent weeks both the quality and quantity of intelligence being offered by Iraqis has greatly improved, leading to such operations as the one last Tuesday in Mosul that killed Hussein’s sons, Uday and Qusay.        Col. David Hogg, commander of the 2nd Brigade of the 4th Infantry Division, said tougher methods are being used to gather the intelligence. On Wednesday night, he said, his troops picked up the wife and daughter of an Iraqi lieutenant general. They left a note: “If you want your family released, turn yourself in.” Such tactics are justified, he said, because, “It’s an intelligence operation with detainees, and these people have info.” They would have been released in due course, he added later.

       The tactic worked. On Friday, Hogg said, the lieutenant general appeared at the front gate of the U.S. base and surrendered.         THE U.S. OFFENSIVE        In the weeks after President Bush declared an end to major combat operations in Iraq on May 1, there were growing signs of resistance in the Sunni triangle, where many former Baath Party operatives, intelligence officers, and Special Republican Guard members were still actively fighting the U.S. military.        Rocket-propelled grenade attacks on U.S. vehicles began in earnest near the end of the month. On May 30, a sophisticated three-point ambush was launched against U.S. troops patrolling in the town of Bayji, just north of Tikrit. As U.S. troops evaded one line of fire, they were attacked by the next. When troops fired back, the Iraqis continued to fight instead of running.        On June 7, a patrol of U.S. military police drove into the town of Thuluya, on a big bend in the Tigris River southeast of Tikrit. Iraqis there told them to leave, and warned that if they came back, they would be killed, said a U.S. commander. It was then that “we started to kick down doors,” recalled a senior Central Command official.        Instead of leaving, at 2 a.m. the next morning, hundreds of U.S. troops cordoned off Thuluya and hundreds more conducted searches throughout the town. F-15 fighters and Apache helicopters whirred overhead, ready to launch missiles on ground commanders’ call. U.S. military speedboats patrolled the Tigris River, cutting off an escape route. The aggressive operation set the tone for the new phase of the war.

       Since then, the Army has sought to keep up an unrelenting pace. “The reality is that in this company, we’ve been doing raids and cordon searches nearly every day” since early June, said Capt. Brian Healey, commander of an infantry company based near Baqubah, 30 miles northeast of Baghdad. Over the past six weeks, he said, sitting on a cot in an old Iraqi military base, his unit alone has detained nearly 100 people.        “I figure you can either sit barricaded in your base camp, or take the fight to the enemy,” said Lt. Col. Larry “Pepper” Jackson, commander of an Army outpost on the outskirts of, which is still described as hostile by U.S. military intelligence analysts. “Our key to success is staying on the offense. But you don’t do it recklessly, because then you’d lose the people.”        He said he has two patrols on the streets of Bayji at any given time. His troops are still attacked, but as a result of the new tactics, “It is a lot quieter — about half as much contact as in May.”        Three major U.S. operations unfolded over the past two months. In the first one in June, Peninsula Strike, U.S. commanders learned that much of the opposition was coming from Baath Party operatives and their allies in the old Iraqi intelligence services. Desert Scorpion, aimed at cutting off escape routes for fugitive Iraqi leaders, came in late June. It began with 56 simultaneous large-scale raids across central Iraq and brought in a hoard of intelligence. Among those netted was Abid Hamid Mahmud, Hussein’s trusted aide. “That was a big event,” recalled a senior Army official. “He has revealed a lot. He knew where all the safe houses and ratlines were.” Ratlines is an Army term for escape routes.        The third major operation, dubbed Soda Mountain, was the first expressly preemptive effort. Concerned about the threat of an offensive tied to July 17, the 35th anniversary of the day Hussein’s Baath Party took power, U.S. troops rounded up 600 party operatives. “We were aggressive and out there, looking to preclude attacks,” the official said. For example, for six days leading up to the holiday, every car leaving Bayji — a town of 30,000 sitting astride Iraq’s major north-south highway — was stopped at a checkpoint, and many were searched.                U.S. officials say they began to see a significant payoff from the series of operations early this month, when the number of attacks began to decline and Iraqis began to provide more information about the resistance. “When you have one operation after another, there is a cumulative effect,” the Army official said. “The effect of all these operations was that walk-in humint” — human intelligence — doubled from early June to mid-July. What’s more, he said, “it was very good quality.”        Tips began paying off so quickly that officials would launch one raid before another was completed, allowing troops to catch some targets off guard because they didn’t know that fellow resistance fighters had been apprehended. Iraqi resistance fighters in the Sunni triangle at first tried to attack U.S. forces directly with AK-47 rifles and rocket-propelled grenades. While some killed U.S. troops, many attempts were ineffective. So in recent weeks, military officers said, Iraqi fighters have turned to other weapons.        “They’ve gone to standoff weapons — mines and mortars, and IEDs” — improvised explosive devices, or bombs — said Capt. John Taylor, the intelligence officer for the base near Bayji.        Last Wednesday, a tank from the base hit an antitank mine for the first time since its unit came to Iraq in April. Lt. Erik Aadland, a former resident of Springfield, Va., was standing in the turret of his tank as it was returning to base after a patrol through Bayji. With the tank just a stone’s throw from the front gate, the mine exploded. “Everything went red,” he recalled. “Then we were covered in black smoke.” Aadland and his crew dismounted and stared at the damage: The right track was blown off, the fender above it twisted upward and three armored panels weighing a total of about 1,100 pounds had been hurled about 90 feet away.

       Iraqi fighters have adjusted their tactics in other ways. Upon learning that their homes were being targeted for raids, Baath Party operatives often moved their weapons, cash and documents into the homes of neighbors, military officials said. In turn, U.S. forces expanded the scope of their raids. “The past six weeks, our patrols have gotten more aggressive, much more frequent,” said Healey, the infantry company commander. “Instead of doing one house, for example, we’ll do a whole street.”        Likewise, Iraqi fighters learned the U.S. military is most comfortable operating at night, when it stands to gain the most from its technical advantages, such as night-vision goggles. Some fighters started going back to their homes in midday, and even holding meetings then, U.S. military officials said.        But in military operations, for every action there is a reaction. Hogg, the 2nd Brigade commander, noted this as he sat in a Humvee on Wednesday afternoon, clenching the butt of a Dominican cigar in his teeth. “The knuckleheads kind of figured out that we like to operate at night, so they started operating during the day, so we starting hitting them during the day,” he said as he waited for one of his battalions to launch a daylight raid. “It’s harder, because of the crowds, but it’s also effective.”        Underscoring the intense nature of the combat, Hogg’s brigade, after weeks of being pestered by enemy mortars, has begun responding with heavy artillery, and so far this month has fired more than 60 high-explosive 155 mm shells.        Some Army units have modified their equipment to help them adjust to urban warfare. At least two battalions in the 4th Infantry Division have mounted .50 caliber heavy machine guns on the back of the pickup-truck version of their Humvees, vehicles sometimes used to carry infantry troops to raids. “Gun-vees,” which resembles the “technicals” used by Somali fighters, are especially useful in battling guerrilla fighters in alleys and other tight urban spaces where tanks and Bradley Fighting Vehicles cannot maneuver.        The modified vehicle also provides a helpful element of surprise, said Jackson, the U.S. commander near Bayji. “A Humvee can sneak up for a raid,” he said. “A tank you can hear a mile away.”        After the fighting is over, U.S. military officials say, it becomes important to repair the damage — a door smashed, a wall breached, an irrigation culvert flattened by a 70-ton M1 Abrams tank. Every U.S. brigade commander in Iraq has a “Commander’s Emergency Repair Fund” of $200,000 that is replenished as he spends it. Over the past six weeks of the U.S. offensive, commanders across Iraq dispensed $13 million to rebuild schools, clinics, water treatment plans and police stations, said Army Col. David MacEwen, who helps coordinate the civic works.

       “During Peninsula Strike, we worked very hard for every combat action to have a ‘carrot’ that followed,” MacEwen said. “We’d do a cordon and search in one area, and then make sure the next day that LPG [cooking gas] was available, or that a pump at a water plant was working.”        The efforts aren’t just aimed at winning hearts and minds, but also at gaining intelligence. “When you’re out doing the civil affairs operations, you get a lot of people coming up and giving you good information,” said Maj. David Vacchi, the operations officer for a battalion operating just northeast of Baghdad.

       Senior U.S. commanders here are so confident about their recent successes that they have begun debating whether victory is in sight. “I think we’re at the hump” now, a senior Central Command official said. “I think we could be over the hump fairly quickly” — possibly within a couple of months, he added.        Hogg, whose troops are still engaged in combat every day, agreed. “I think we’re fixing to turn the corner,” he said Thursday. “I think the operations over the next couple of weeks will get us there.”                 Staff researcher Robert Thomason in Washington contributed to this report.                 © 2003 The Washington Post Company

By Peter Greste BBC correspondent in Baghdad It was a single shot – nothing spectacular – but that split-second act of Iraqi resistance might well be recorded as the point at which America turned from liberator to occupier.

The soldier who died was on a foot patrol through the Baghdad University.

There was no sign of imminent danger, according to the politics and engineering students who saw what happened.

The soldier was almost certainly feeling relaxed and at ease as he sipped his soft-drink in the stifling heat.

Like all American troops on patrol here, he was sweating beneath his Kevlar flak-jacket and helmet.

They provided no protection whatsoever from the man who walked through the lunch-time crowd, put a pistol to the back of the soldier’s skull, and pulled the trigger.

Options narrow

The killing was an audacious strike that forced the US military planners here to once more re-think their strategy across Iraq.

We’ve learned, to our cost, that as soon as you let your guard down, the bad guys whack us out of nowhere US soldier “Every time there’s another attack, our bosses look at it and work out how to avoid the same thing happening again,” said Lieutenant Brian Kendrick of the 1st Armoured Division.

“We’re getting new orders all the time, but I’m not sure how you stop that kind of thing, unless we give up the foot patrols. But they are the best way of getting in touch with people, and gathering intel (intelligence)”.

As the steady drum-beat of attacks strike the coalition forces each day, the options for the military planners narrow.

‘Hard to fight back’

There are no more foot patrols through the Baghdad University now.

Soldiers hardly ever leave their armoured Humvee vehicles, and every Iraqi civilian is treated as a potential attacker.

And for every death, there are at least a dozen other attacks that do not make the daily press bulletins.

In military terms, they are barely a pinprick on the rump of the American military, but they are taking their toll on the individual soldiers.

“You can’t ever relax here,” said one.

“There’s no obvious danger, but we’ve learned to our cost that as soon as you let your guard down, the bad guys whack us out of nowhere. But with so many civilians around, it’s hard to fight back.”

But some American troops are.

Sapping morale

Soldiers at a checkpoint recently believed they had spotted a sniper preparing to attack from the roof of a nearby building.

They fired at the position, and went to see what was there.

They found they had indeed killed someone – an 11-year-old boy.

It is a complex, messy and badly defined battlefield that is driving the Americans ever further from the very people they are supposed to be liberating, and sapping morale at the same time.

“I don’t mind doing my duty. That’s why I signed up,” Sergeant Todd Lewis said.

“But the problem is I don’t know how long I’m going to have to do it. I was married two years ago, and I’ve only seen my wife for six months in that time.

“We usually know how long we’re going to be away, but the most our bosses are telling us now is ‘We’ll try to have you home before Christmas’. I don’t think they really know what they’re doing. I certainly don’t,” he said.

In and out?

And so, the question of an exit strategy has now become central to the issue of flagging troop morale.

It exists in broad theoretical terms – the plan is to set up political structures, draft a new constitution, hold elections and then pray that the result will be a Western friendly and oil-rich government in Baghdad.

But that is not the kind of clear “roadmap”, to borrow a term, with defined timetables and obvious way-points along the route that the Iraqi people or coalition soldiers want to see.

“First they said we’d be in and out as quickly as possible,” said Sergeant Lewis.

“Now they’re saying that we’ll be here for as long as it takes to establish freedom and democracy. The longer I’m here, the less sure I am that it will happen.”

Story from BBC NEWS: http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/middle_east/3055553.stm

Published: 2003/07/10 11:42:31 GMT

© BBC MMIII

Blogging’s too good for them

Paul Carr Monday June 9, 2003 The Guardian

Walking through the streets of Blogistan this week, I couldn’t help noticing a certain tension in the air. The natives were restless. The saloon bars were abuzz with nervous chatter. And it wasn’t about Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Something was most definitely up. But what? And who was this Eric Schmidt fellow that everyone was talking about? And why did I seem to be the only person in the world without his own weblog? Questions, questions.

Well it turns out that Schmidt is the CEO of Google (who knew?) and, if rumours are to be believed, he has plans to move weblogs out of the search engine’s main index and into a separate, less highly trafficked directory. What an absolute cad. Or at least he would be if the rumours weren’t just speculation – the result of an enthusiastic leap of blogic by IT news site the Register, who suggested that when Google launches its new weblog search tool, it may also decide to purge bloggers from its main database. Possibly.

No need for ordinary Blogistanis to panic just yet then – but the rumours did give internet experts an excuse to get all het up about the undue prominence of weblogs in Google search results. No matter what you search for – celebrity gossip, weapons of mass destruction, insect recipes, donkey porn – you can bet your bottom dollar that above the research papers and official news sources you’ll find a load of bloggers putting in their two pennyworth.

“Foul!” cry the blogger haters, “these two-bit amateur diarists are taking over the internet – it’s time we shoved them off into their own search engine, where they can do no more harm.” Just imagine… no more illiterate teenage wannabes clogging up the world’s most popular search engine with their idiotic “which Sex And The City character are you?” quizzes and incestuous links to their mates. No more American neo-Nazis babbling on about the Dixie Chicks and inciting racial hatred. No more tree-huggers talking about henna tattoos, home schooling and tofu. Just a list of proper sites full of proper information, written by proper journalists and proper academics. Fantastic. And if people want to hang out with Joe Blogs then fine, they can just click the appropriate tab and wallow until their brains turn to mush.

The only slight problem is that, despite what some commentators would have you believe, bloggers are not the scourge of the internet. In fact they are the internet. The whole point of the web was to allow anyone, regardless of budget or influence, to share information with the rest of the world. It certainly wasn’t supposed to be a giant electronic shopping mall or an interactive brand extension for major broadcasters and publishers.

Also, there seems to be an assumption that all weblogs are pointless, self-absorbed amateur journals that can be lumped together under a single search tab. This despite the fact that an increasing number of high-profile journalists and publishers are using weblog software as an easy and cost-effective way to deliver first-rate, original content to thousands – or even millions – of readers. Take Salam Pax, the Iraqi who has just been recruited by this newspaper on the strength of his wartime weblog.

While my favourite tabloid columnist, Tony “idiot” Parsons spent the conflict in front of his computer bashing out page after page of laddish nonsense for the Mirror’s unique readership of warmongering peaceniks, Salam was in Baghdad, using his blog to drive home the realities of war to a vast international audience. And yet, if the haters had their way Salam would be dragged off into the bloghetto while Parsons remained a free man. What kind of justice is that?

Do they really believe that it’s possible to separate the web into legitimate information sites (good) and weblogs (evil) or that by purging bloggers from Google, the internet will suddenly become more relevant and more useful? Not only is this hilariously simplistic but it’s also diverting attention from the real problem – that the web is drowning in a sea of crap, created partly by the less literate webloggers but also by biased media outlets, hate groups, pointless personal homepages, porn sites, multilevel marketers and out and out loons.

If Google really wants to improve its service then it should forget about trying to treat bloggers as one homogenous, problematic group and start developing intelligent search robots that are capable of separating the wheat from the chaff across the entire web. These robots should: a) look at the actual content of a site and decide whether the content is useful and worth reading, b) group it together with other relevant sites to give surfers a comprehensive overview of all the available information on whatever subject they’re interested in and c) ensure that these handy packages of links and information appear at the top of the search results, above all the unfiltered rubbish.

A utopian technological fantasy? Not really. In fact these robots already exist. They’re called webloggers. And without them Google’s index would be a much poorer place.

· Paul Carr is editor of The Friday Thing (www.thefridaything.co.uk). His new print publication, The London News Review, launches in August

Who dares wins

The ‘comedy terrorist’ who gatecrashed Prince William’s 21st birthday party may have zero talent for jokes or impersonation. But there’s one quality Aaron Barschak possesses in spades – chutzpah. And that, writes Simon Hattenstone, can get you a very long way

Simon Hattenstone and Isabelle Chevallot Wednesday June 25, 2003 The Guardian

He may be a rank failure on the comedy circuit, he may be a loser in life and love, he may belong to the great unwashed, he may even have hooked up with a former stripper, but Aaron Barschak possesses something most of us haven’t got. Not only did he climb three walls and two gates to gatecrash Prince William’s 21st birthday party, he did so dressed as Osama bin Laden (though he actually looked more like Michael Jackson), performed a comedy routine, kissed William on both cheeks, left to wild applause and headed off for the champagne bar. That’s when he got arrested.

Barschak doesn’t care. The Crown is unlikely to press charges against him, he has become a national treasure and front-page news. Despite his transparent lack of talent, he has achieved his ambition to become famous. Undeterred by decades of failure (he wanted to be an actor, but ended up as a removal man and waiter), he has carried on in the face of his own lack of ability, finally winning our admiration by doing something most of us would never have dared do. In short, Barschak has proved his chutzpah.

What is chutzpah? And how do you pronounce it? Well, last things first. It is pronounced Khoots-pah: imagine you are clearing your throat, preparing yourself for a really good spit (think Paul Mariner on Match of the Day, if you’re old enough). That’s the “ch”, and the rest spells itself. It is a Yiddish word, with no English equivalent, and there is no better way to express audacity, daring and presumption.

Perhaps the best way of understanding it is to examine the people who have it in spades: Eddie the Eagle (a hopelessly talentless skier, but that didn’t deter him); Bill Clinton (his redefining of “sexual relations” was truly audacious); Karl Power (prankster extraordinaire, who managed to get himself into the Manchester United team picture, played on centre court at Wimbledon and went out to bat for England); Mohammed Saeed al-Sahaf (Iraq’s minister of information, who insisted on television “There are no American infidels in Baghdad. Never!” when we could see them in the backdrop); the whole of Britart (“Believe me, my unmade bed really is as good as any Vermeer”); Ruby Wax (rifling her way through Imelda Marcos’s shoe closet), and Christine Hamilton (simply for being Christine Hamilton).

Michael Winner, who knows more about chutzpah than most, is keen to help us out. “Chutzpah is two things. It can be cheek and insolence. But it can also be used to describe a derisory act, for example, someone who is selling something could say: ‘What Chaime offered me was a chutzpah!'”

Hats off to Barschak, says Winner. “It had all the elements of chutzpah: the impertinence of intruding on a class way above your own; the expertise of finding the way of doing it; and it also had the ludicrousness of pitting the east- european immigrant, albeit one generation removed, against the royal family. I think he should be thoroughly applauded.”

Why do we associate Winner with chutzpah? “Ah, I excel in it. I’m always doing impertinent things. For example, when I was 14 I befriended the publisher Paul Hamlyn, who was an old boy at my school who had gone on to publish film books. So I phoned all the film studios and said ‘I’m writing a book called Film-Making From the Children’s Angle’, and all the studios welcomed me and I met the stars and that’s how I got to see how films were made. I went back time and again and always ate for free. Eventually, Paul phoned me and said ‘I hear you’re going round saying you’re writing a book for me. Give it a rest, would you?’ We remained friends till he died.”

The author Leo Rosten defines chutzpah as follows: a man kills both his parents and then throws himself at the court’s mercy on the grounds that he is an orphan. There is also an old Jewish joke that illustrates chutzpah. A Jewish grandmother is sitting on the beach with her beloved grandson when a freak wave sweeps him out to sea, where he is instantly devoured by the ocean. The distraught woman sinks to her knees, wailing, pleading with God to spare the child’s life. Suddenly, there is a celestial thunderclap and her prayers are answered. Another wave gathers the boy up from the depths and plonks him safely, miraculously, beside the old lady, at which she turns her eyes heavenwards, and says: “His cap’s missing.”

Barschak’s brand of chutzpah is more than an attitude, it has an element of performance art to it. Indeed, this will almost certainly turn out to be his greatest performance. (At 36, he is not thought to have a promising future as a stand-up – indeed, a close observer of the comedy circuit told me: “As a stand-up comic, never in his wildest dreams could Barschak aspire to mediocrity.”) As with most chutzperians, Barschak’s act was not an end in itself – his performance at Prince William’s party ended with him advertising his live gigs at the Edinburgh festival later this year.

The political activist Peter Tatchell also employs chutzpah as a means to an end. For example, earlier this year he stopped Tony Blair’s motorcade by running out, suffragette-style, in front of his limousine, ending up under the wheels. It was a way of drawing attention to his protest against the invasion of Iraq. Last year, he twice attempted a citizen’s arrest on Robert Mugabe, and got himself beaten up into the bargain.

I ring him to tell him he’s been voted a top chutzperian in the Guardian’s (admittedly unofficial) survey. For once, he’s speechless. But I think he’s pleased. Why does he think that we think he’s got chutzpah? “Well, I guess I’m rather reluctant to show deference where many people think it is due, especially if there’s an issue of injustice involved.”

Does he have any chutzpah role models? “Oh yes. Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Sylvia Pankhurst. They didn’t play politics by orthodox rules. They were fearless in confronting the forces of oppression. I’ve tried to adapt their methods of non-violent direct action to the contemporary campaign for human rights.”

George Galloway also features prominently in our list of great chutzperians. He is delighted when I pass on the good news. “I strongly approve of chutzpah,” says the controversial politician, currently suspended from the Labour party after making anti-war comments on television. What does chutzpah mean to him? “It means audacity. I’ve always followed the motto of the French revolutionary Danton – l’audace, encore l’audace, toujours l’audace . And in my line of work, elan can make the difference. I do venture into the lion’s den. Sometimes I’m bitten, but so far so good – I keep getting up again.”

I tell him what I think makes him a great chutzperian – how he can smoke the fattest Cuban cigars and wear the most expensive designer suits, proclaim his socialism and not appear to be a hypocrite. “Others do things behind closed doors,” he replies. “I prefer to openly acknowledge my belief that the devil should not possess all the best suits, and that if one has honestly earned the wherewithal to buy tobacco one should buy the best Havanas.”

With magnificent chutzpah, Christine Hamilton has made a living from milking her infamy. I’m in the fortunate position of being able to tell her that she is one of the Guardian’s top chutzperians. She squeals with delight. “Oh yes, everything I do displays chutzpah,” she says. “It means you’ve got balls and joie de vivre and a bit of cheek. Oh, yes – I’ve been the narrator in the Rocky Horror Show, bossy battleaxe in Jack and the Beanstalk, I’ve even had a bath in strawberry jam for the British Heart Foundation. The rumours that I drink to excess, by the way, are ridiculous. I do everything to excess. I drink with chutzpah. I do everything with chutzpah.”

One of the great things about people with chutzpah is that they like to talk about it. Of course they do. They love talking about themselves, their nerve, their excesses, their presumption, their amazing ability to achieve a great deal (often with very little obvious talent).

With one obvious exception. Reading about Barschak reminds me of a group of people with unequalled chutzpah – each year they take £35m off us without a word of thanks, they have filched some of the world’s greatest paintings for their own private collections, are a law unto themselves and they act as if they own the bloody country.

But the Royal Family were, as ever, unavailable for comment.

-Ian.

——- http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cidW8&ncidW8&e=9&u=/nm/ 20030625/ts_nm/britain_alsahaf_dc

Report: Iraqi Ex-Information Minister Captured 2 hours, 16 minutes ago Add Top Stories – Reuters to My Yahoo!

LONDON (Reuters) – Britain’s Daily Mirror said on Wednesday U.S. troops had arrested Iraq (news – web sites)’s information minister under Saddam Hussein (news – web sites), Mohammed Saeed al-Sahaf, at a roadblocks in a Baghdad suburb.

There was no immediate reaction from Washington.

The ex-minister, dubbed “Comical Ali” for proclaiming the defeat of U.S. forces even as they moved into Baghdad, had been hiding out at a relative’s house watching satellite TV, but was caught on Monday night, the paper said in a report from Baghdad.

“He has some serious talking to do … this time,” a “senior coalition source” was quoted as saying. There was no independent confirmation of the story and no other sourcing.

“Saddam Hussein has escaped to Belarus – according to mounting evidence reaching DEBKA-Net-Weekly’s intelligence sources.

On March 29, two chartered planes picked up Saddam, sons, families and close aides at Baghdad international airport – as US forces fought their way to Iraqi capital – and flew them to Minsk. On April 2, DEBKAfile’s War Diary reported Saddam had departed Baghdad.

More details of Saddam’s flight appear in coming issue of DEBKA-Net-Weekly reaching subscribers Friday, April 25”

-Ian.

-Ian.

—– http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/2955231.stm

US firm cashes in on ‘Comical Ali’

In the latest attempt to cash in on the war, a US toy company has produced dolls based on Mohammed Saeed al-Sahhaf, Iraq’s now-famous former information minister.

Mr al-Sahhaf gained notoriety – and even a cult following – during the war for his refusal to admit that Iraq was being beaten.

Now, in a sarcastic tribute to what it calls Mr al-Sahhaf’s “one-man battle against the observable facts”, US-based Hero Builders has produced 12-inch-tall action figures in his image.

The “Iraqi Dis-Information Minister” doll can be had for $24.95, or for an extra $11, there is a talking version that parrots phrases such as “There are no American infidels in Baghdad. Never!” and “Our initial assessment is that they will all die.”

Toys go to war

The doll is the latest in a long line of war-related dolls from Hero Builders, which boasts that its figures are all hand-made in America.

Among other patriotic offerings, the company also produces the “Saddam Insane”, the “Babbling Osama” and the “Dirty Terrorist”.

It also sells pink dresses and bondage outfits, which it says can be used to demean its villainous dolls.

Since the outbreak of war, a host of companies have rushed out patriotic or topical products, many of which have been accused of poor taste.

This week, for example, electronics giant Sony admitted a lapse of judgement, after attempting to trademark the phrase “shock and awe” – a reference to US bombing tactics – for its computer games.