A Web Undone 2 is moving again, but will hopefully stay put for a while in its new home at http://www.williamsonday.com.

11:21:01 PM    

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8:39:07 AM    

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Everybody loves me baby . . . "To know America is to love America?. Advertising maven Charlotte Beers is trying to sell the U.S. to the Muslim world, but nobody's buying it. [Salon.com] Here's a fun game: Combine the following quotation from this story with some article below and guess whether Muslims abroad are buying what she's selling. Here's the quotation:

According to Beers, America's information offensive is off to a grand start, putting out messages that are "believable and always true and accurate," she says. One of her first salvos was a series of mini-documentaries about happy American Muslims, designed to show Muslims abroad that the war on terror isn't a clash of civilizations.

Now, you have to guess which story below goes with this quotation, and you have to guess the reaction of Muslims to both. Tricky, huh!" [The Decline and Fall of the American Empire]

Sadly, we seem to be more committed to examining our propoganda than our policy.  Jackson Diehl argues recently in the Washington Post that our revisions to our broadcasts to Iran reflect this emphasis of style over substance, with American pop culture replacing substantive news. Anne Applebaum chimed in a short time later on the administration's neglect of democratic movements in Iran.

8:18:47 AM    

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10:59:15 PM    

 King Mohammed, President Chirac dedicate Mohammed V Square in Paris [Arabic News]

10:57:34 PM    

"PBS seeks to fill the gap tonight with a two-hour documentary, "Muhammad: Legacy of a Prophet." It evocatively if sparingly lays out the biographical material unfamiliar to most Americans: Muhammad's childhood as an orphan in Mecca, his marriage to a wealthy widow almost twice his age, his visions of the Angel Gabriel, his military battles and his victory over Arab paganism."

Perhaps not surprisingly, it appears that this documentary pulls its punches.  The review does give it credit for addressing the Prophet's execution of the Jews of Medina, but points out that that the program goes to great lengths to dissassociate this act from any historical animosity between Jews and Muslims.  Besides the oft-quoted respect of the Prophet for "People of the Book" -- Jews and Christians -- it is perhaps worth noting once again that Christian atrocities against Jews over the past 2000 years overshadow the comparative tolerance that the Arab and Turkish regimes exercised during the same period.

9:58:00 PM    

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"In a speech at the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank, Powell outlined what he called a U.S.-Middle East Partnership Initiative that he said would attempt to move Arab societies out of their current state of economic stagnation, closed and rigid political systems and severely limited educational opportunities, especially for women."

This sounds like it might be a small step in the right direction.  With a budget of only $29 million, emphasis on small?

8:00:20 AM    

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"The Moroccan government has promised to communication and media professionals an open policy, marked by efficiency and heedful to citizens' expectations and concerns. "In light of the guidelines made by King Mohammed VI to give a new impetus to the dynamic of change, the government decided to adopt an efficient and open media and communication policy, a policy heedful to citizens with a view to promoting their enthusiasm to contribute to Morocco's development process," Moroccan Communication Minister, Nabil Benabdallah said in a letter to media professionals. "The Communication department will see to it that the information sector remain open to freedom of speech, respectful to the profession's code of ethics and built on two major principles: freedom and accountability," the official said."

At first blush, it looks as theough the Moroccan government is at least saying the right things, which is perhaps more than one can say for our own.  However, the troubling phrase about accountability and the "code of ethics" -- in the context of ending a government monopoly -- may suggest that there will still be sharp limits on any government tolerance of dissent.

11:05:33 AM    

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"The new evil empire It is ironic that despite the strong commitment to democracy in Islam, most Muslims today are living in dictatorships.  The Muslim people want freedom. . .  Much like the people of the communist world of the past, the Muslim people today are hostages in totalitarian regimes [like those] that flourished during the days of the Cold War." - Benazir Bhutto, former prime minister of Pakistan, speaking at Hillsdale College, September 2002" [The LitiGator]

11:13:15 AM