This is next

--

Oh, you Axis!
You dark prince!
Wielding your scimitar, bloodthirsty.

Castle of Pure Evil:
Shimmering, oriental palace;
Standing in sharp, foreboding profile on the horizon of the American public discourse.

--

This article presents a fairly well-documented genealogy of a key brick in the ideological bridge that would link Saddam Hussein with "Al Qaeda" in 2001.

Both capitalism and democracy are premised upon the "well-informed consumer," who will make the best self-interested decision based on that knowledge. But in our information-based economy, hidden-fee cell phone pricing plans and insidiously suggestive but unfounded front page news stories both seriously threaten the integrity of each system, respectively.

What satisfies me about this article is the same thing that satisfies me about reading Noam Chomsky and Paul Farmer re-trace American foreign policy Haiti: It is the incomparable pleasure of The Instant Replay. The semi-processed "data" that shapes public opinion is incredibly fluid--it zips by at a hundred miles per hour in a constant fluctuating feed of small information parcels. The Feed is not physical but spiritual, never complete but always coming into being (constantly reshaped based on its reception and consequences). Who among us mortals can possibly keep track of what was said, who said it, what happened as a result, much less whether or not it was true?

Thus, as an information consumer, I am always surprised by and grateful to anyone who has the resources and tenacity to exhume, reassemble and re-present an "information play" in slow motion, that it might be processed in a way that can yield understanding.