The following went up at the mirror site this morning. Blogger/Blogspot can't get it's act together. That's why UK Computer Gurus said we needed a mirror site all those months ago. If you don't see anything up here, you should always check the mirror site.
NYT: "Iraqis See the Little Things Fade Away in War's Gloom" (Sabrina Tavernise)
Their stories began with a familiar theme: the shrinking lives of middle-class families in the capital. Social clubs have emptied out. Weddings have been sparsely attended. But as the circle has become smaller, and as they focus intensely on just staying alive, they said, even the basics are being stripped away.
"All the elements of society have been dismantled," said Fawsia Abdule al-Attiya, a sociologist and a professor at Baghdad University. "You are afraid because you are a woman, a man, a Sunni, a Shiite, a Kurd.
"All these things start to change society."
In a room in the Amal Women's Network that was strewn with remnants of a morning meeting -- a half eaten piece of cake, an orange peel, some crumpled tissues -- the women talked about the changes force on their lives by that fear.
One of the women, a senior employee in an Iraqi ministry that is now run by religious Shiites, recalled recently walking through the gates of her office building with several colleagues, two wearing form-fitting dresses with bared heads and a third in a hijab, when security guards pulled the third woman aside.
"They told her to tell her friends to be more cautious," she said, leaning out of her high-backed chair. She asked that her name not be used because it would be recognized. She has received two threats on her life.
The above is from Sabrina Tavernise's "Iraqis See the Little Things Fade Away in War's Gloom" in this morning's New York Times. It's one of two articles that Tavernise contributes this morning. It's also the first Times article to address the reality for women in Iraq. It's the must read. The second, "Seeking to Ease Rift, Bush Confers With Iraq Premier" finds Tavernise in the same trap John F. Burns was in yesterday exploring a topic through officials' statements (the curse of the paper of record). Tony Snow Job gives a lively and saucy performance telling of the praise Nouri al-Maliki supposedly heaped on Bully Boy yesterday in a tele-conference. al-Maliki's spokesperson is far less effusive. If there's truth to be found, it won't be from the spokespeople for officials. (That is the curse of the Times. Yesterday, it blew up in John F. Burns face. That's the paper's problems, not Burns'. Kevin asked about that and I'm sure it wasn't clear yesterday. As to why it wasn't clear, we'll go into that in a moment, but Burns had the misfortune of being the one assigned to the story and writing it for the Times. It would have blown up regardless of byline.)
Kyle Snyder? Did he return? Keesha asks that in an e-mail. I'm having the same difficulty she's having, there appears to be no story about a return. If someone sees one (I'm not talking the Times), note it. As for right now, I can't locate one (and neither can Keesha).
There's no comic from Isaiah today. There's no report from Ruth this weekend. If I wasn't clear in yesterday's entry (and I'm sure I wasn't) it was due rushing and dealing with Blogger/Blogspot problems. That's why the entry was e-mailed. If you missed it (and I didn't cross post this at the mirror site, I'll do so tonight), Kat has a new review. She dictated it over the phone so if there are typos, that's my fault. [The Saturday call was scheduled last Monday. As members know, Kat has a family member who is dying and she's out of the country. Dealing with that and other things do not leave her a great deal of time. Whether it would post or not, the call was scheduled and that's why I didn't say, "Kat, take the weekend off." She also added input for two features at The Third Estate Sunday Review.]
The problems are still ongoing with Blogger/Blogspot. Due to those yesterday morning, I told Ruth and Isaiah to take the weekend off. Isaiah's comic has to be e-mailed to the site. Rebecca's attempted to e-mail illustrations for The Third Estate Sunday Review to her site most of the morning with no luck. That's not surprising to me (due to the B/B problems) and, fearing that, I asked Isaiah to take the weekend off. Ruth? She's already frustrated with Blogger/Blogspot. Two Saturdays ago, she did a report and lost the whole thing. (That's when the current problems began.) Then, on Wednesday, she was planning to fill in for Kat but couldn't even log in despite trying for several hours. The B/B problems only seem to get worse each day.
Third Estate Sunday Review?
We've got five or six features finished. I'm not sure exactly. We need to do the editorial. We'd also like to do another piece. However, we lost several pieces throughout the night due to the problems. Ava and my TV commentary will probably go up without a conclusion when it goes up. We have no idea what the conclusion was and it was one of the pieces that was lost but we were able to use "recover post" to grab most of it. After that, we started doing all features outside of B/B with the intent to transfer them over when the problems were resolved.
This entry is going up at the mirror site first. I can't log into the main site. Later today, it will be transferred over. Right now? Ava, Jess, Jim, Ty, Dona and myself are going to watch a movie and get some sleep.
We're all wiped out (everyone participating in the edition). We've done illustrations, we've done features (that were completely lost) and we've done five or six things that we've completed. It's been a nightmare and most will tell you right now, they wish we'd taken the weekend off. It doesn't feel like it was worth the aggrevation.
If B/B's not resovled its problems by the time we wake up this evening, we'll transfer any features we wrote outside of B/B over to this site.
That's where things stand right now.
The e-mail address for this site is common_ills@yahoo.com.
Posted at 04:49 am by thecommonills