"The West won the world not by the superiority of its ideas or values or religion but rather by its superiority in applying organized violence. Westerners often forget this fact, non-Westerners never do."

Samuel P. Huntington

->Wired reported that hackers attacked the website of Arab satellite television network Al-Jazeera's English edition of Al-Jazeera on Tuesday, rendering it intermittently unavailable, the site's host said.

->There is a story in Wiretapmag on the
Party Y: "Party Y's goals are to increase the number of young people voting, multiply the number of young elected officials (under 30), and energize young people to participate in the voting process. The bottom line, according to Party Y, is to make politics cool by getting youth interested in government, giving them someone to vote for, and launching them en masse into America's voting booths. "

->Douglas Rushkoff has a new book out which introduces the concept of "Open-Source Judaism" The next one will be on rave and religion. Here'S an excerpt: "It wasn't about scoring, it was about group organism. Like a slam-dance or mosh pit, but without the slamming. Just the groove. And the smiles. If everything went right - and usually everything went right - there'd be a moment, or maybe even a whole hour - when it just clicked into place. All the individual dancers would experience themselves as this single, coordinated being. A creature with a thousand arms and eyes, making love with itself and reaching back as far as creation and forward to the very end of time. They became a living fractal, feeding back on itself - sometimes quite literally with video cameras, projectors, and screens - right through to infinity. And, as Peter Pan, the first fairy tale raver told us, "beyond."

->Dear Raed is an alternative warblog from Baghdad.

-> Good new sources: Warblogging.com and Warblogs.cc and back-to-iraq.com