The Cherry Orchard

Let’s take a moment to salute a brave woman who endured a “tour of ridicule” that must have been more difficult than many imagine. In an age when a stunning number of intelligent American citizens say that they feel powerless to influence the direction of their own elected government’s foreign policy, Cindy Sheehan’s bold and heartfelt personal protest against our conduct of the Iraq war proved them all wrong. Here’s Cindy’s farewell diary on Daily Kos. I hope she gets some well-deserved rest and perspective, but I also hope we’ll eventually hear from her again.

I started this blog last July, because I was disturbed by the wars raging in the Holy Lands, frustrated with the lack of useful debate in America over the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and disgusted by the news from Darfur. Despite the cozy weather, I remember last summer as a moral nadir, a season of hopelessness.

In the nine months since, I’m glad to say the cease-fire between Israel and Hezbollah and Hamas has mostly held up (though a cease-fire is a far cry from a peace settlement). I’m also glad that a majority of sensible politicians in both the Democratic and Republican parties have made the smart decision to stop backing the Bush/Cheney position on Iraq, and I have much more faith in our legislative branch since the November elections (though the season of hopelessness is far from over in Darfur, and we’ve got stuff like global warming and nuclear proliferation in North Korea and Iran to worry about).

I’m also glad that The Cherry Orchard is regularly finding more readers, and that I’m doing a better job of figuring out how to write about political topics (after years of writing about fiction and poetry on LitKicks I thought it’d be easy, but it’s not). A post I put up immediately after the Virginia Tech killings was cited in an article by Graeme Hamilton in Canada’s National Post, which is nice, even though it inspired an excitable fellow who writes for a blog called Weapons of Mass Discussion to call me an asshat and question my honesty when I say I would not sit quietly and pray for salvation if a crazy person entered a room I was in with guns and started shooting.

How does it feel to have somebody call you an “asshat” on their blog? Honestly, it feels just fine. I stand by my words, and I think it’s amusing that this person calls me “cowardly and idiotic”, and then goes on to say that I have a point. Yes, my name-calling friend, I certainly do.

I was also pleased to be cited in a post-Dems-debate roundup by Michael Weiss at Slate. I especially like it that Weiss refers to this site as a “nonpartisan political blog” because, despite the fact that I feel such deep rage at the Bush-Cheney administration that I sometimes want to call them “asshats”, I do tend to be a moderate on most issues, and I think the best political writing recognizes the validity of all sides of an argument. That’s why the blogroll on this site lists everything from Firedoglake to Little Green Footballs, from Sabbah’s blog to Solomania. I want all the viewpoints, because anybody who believes in a position strongly enough to argue it in public must have something valid to say.

What is an argument? Why do we argue, and more interestingly, what exactly do we do when we argue? I think I’d like to take a break from my news-oriented postings here at the Fruitstand, and begin another “inquiry” (yes, that’s right, it’s time for another multi-part series of postings on a single topic). The subject of this inquiry goes back to my days as a philosophy student studying Plato and Hume and Nietzsche and James, but I hope I’ll also show some wisdom from the years I’ve lived since then. The inquiry will begin shortly, and the topic is: “What Are People Doing When They Argue?”. Yeah, it sounds like the title of a Raymond Carver story, and maybe we can even argue about the title of the inquiry, if you want. You asshat.

I’d just like to point to two posts on Daily Kos today:

Waterboarding. This is just a clip from a movie, but the illustration helps to understand what the word means. I could preach about this, but it’d be better if you just watch the short clip and come to your own conclusion.

Me Shooting My Mouth Off Again I read DailyKos regularly and I am fairly sympatico with most of the points of view represented there. However, I don’t feel confident that Democrats have a coherent strategy for 2006 (or 2008) and I think liberal/progressive activists should try to find every opportunity to de-politicize their message and appeal to a wider range of American voters. The big message for 2006 should be “WE NEED COMPETENT GOVERNMENT, AND THIS AIN’T IT”. Incompetence, incompetence, incompetence, incompetence. We don’t need any other charge to win elections, and liberals should stop over-prosecuting their case. I’ve posted about this a few times on Daily Kos and elsewhere. Sometimes I get nice reactions (big plus signs, which means people like what I said), and sometimes I get ignored. I’m pretty sure I’m right, either way.

The 61st General Assembly of the United Nations is going to convene in mid-September, and since I live in New York City I thought I’d pop on to UN.org, the official United Nations website to check out the session agenda and plan a possible visit.

I was about to be taken on a surreal trip. After spending two and a half hours reviewing various sections of this website, I am disgusted that such an important website is being run so shabbily. Does anyone in this organization realize that internet communication is an important, growing trend? I state above that Al-Qaeda has better websites than the United Nations. How do I know this? Well, I am a professional web designer, and I follow my field enough to know that there are numerous webmasters who support Al-Qaeda’s operations who have demonstrated basic competence in their field. Based on the evidence, that is more than can be said for the operators of UN.org.

I know that Al-Qaeda has a better website than UN.org because — no joke — my 15-year-old son’s MySpace page is a better website than UN.org.

Here’s what you’ll find if you dive into this mess. The most important documents are only available in PDF form — not secure documents, but simple press releases and agenda announcements. This indicates that the site does not have a working web content management system at all. This is bad, but it gets worse: many attempts to download these documents (over, say, my 99/9% reliable cable modem connection) don’t work at all, but instead spin forever, or else they deliver this familiar friend:

I tried many different paths through the multi-lingual, multi-platform and multi-broken website, and found myself looking at .jsp pages, .asp pages (Microsoft began phasing .asp out in favor of .aspx about four years ago), .shtml pages (totally archaic) and many, many custom extensions followed by frightening, endless strings of encoded parameters that clearly were not delivering the right codes.

The only common architectural principle behind most of the paths was that they all ended in sudden crashes. Oh yeah, webcasts are promised, except they often end up looking like this:

Even if the site were not broken in so many places (and maybe I caught it on a bad day), the lack of inspiration behind the technical architecture is staggering. Sure, this problem is an amusing metaphor for the UN’s general lack of effectiveness, but I don’t think we should laugh it off too easily. Digital communication is more than just a metaphor in 2006. It’s a key competency, and UN.org doesn’t have it.

I’m a professional web developer (my work has included PearlJam.com, WordsWithoutBorders.org, LitKicks.com, BobDylan.com and BruceSpringsteen.net) and I am willing to offer my services to the United Nations at a fair price, if they promise to first fire the bozos currently running these pizza boxes, as well as the pencil-pushers who determine the site’s layout and structure. I trust somebody in the organization understands email enough to contact me at levi.asher@gmail.com.