I talked about illiteracy in the Muslim world. Michael at Musing’s Musings, Bulldog at Main & Central, and Anne at Peevish have all posted on this.

Folks, you can’t present a landfill as a gated community, no matter how much you pay a PR firm. The US government has a history in the area, and while this administration may have forgotten about it, the people who live there haven’t.

Iraqis and Iranians remember that the US supported Saddam for years during the Iran-Iraq War. Iranians know about the US involvement in bringing the last Shah to power. The Afghanis remember how the US left after the Soviets were pushed out. The Kurds remember being screwed by Republican Presidents since Nixon. Americans may not remember, the locals do. The locals don’t differentiate between administrations: the American government is the American government.

The Danish imams didn’t use Blackberrys, blogs, or e-mail to build support for their point of view; they sent a delegation of religious leaders to the religious leaders in the various Muslim countries. Information comes from the mosque, not the ‘Net.

PR is not going to overcome Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo, or Fallujah. PR is not going to overcome calls for “crusades” by Americans. PR is not going to overcome the burial of “wedding parties”, women and children, the old and weak. PR is not going to offset the lack of water, sewers, electricity, and fuel in Iraq.

If Rumsfeld would like to improved relations with the Muslim world he could start with a heart-felt act of contrition followed by the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. These people have lived under repressive regimes for years and they know propaganda when they hear it.

He has a series of podcasts hosted by The Guardian that are reasonably bizarre. [I just noticed this is also Silly Site o’ the Day by Elayne.]

You have to wonder if parents realize their child will be weird and therefore name them Karl, or being named Karl makes a child weird.

If you have an interest on some background for the sports, you could do a lot worse than the Canadian Broadcasting Company’s website.

If you don’t know what a luge is or have never seen a curling spiel, they have explanations for every event. [Spiel is German for game and is the term for a curling match.]

They also have a cartoonist, Instigator, available for some levity, Canadian style.

Italian television is watched in the former colony of Libya, and riots broke out in the very conservative Muslim nation resulting in the death of 10 protestors, shot by Libyan police in an attempt to protect the Italian consulate.

Mr. Calderoli has resigned.

Actually it only affects OSX version 10.4 and you have to install the file, “latestpics.tgz”, so you would have to be incredibly stupid to have your machine affected, but it shows someone cares enough to start wrecking havoc on Macs.

“My family and I are deeply sorry for all that Vice President Cheney and his family have had to go through this week,” Whittington said.

Imagine if I had said that, or you saw it on TBogg. This may be that particular form of “Southern polite” that mystifies outsiders and delights insiders.

Only Harry’s friends know for sure.