BuzzMachine

The memorial wall
: I’ve been going to the World Trade Center site to do research for my memorial proposal and I’ve been touched by the actions of the many pilgrims who come there. The steel fence all around the site is kept clean of markings and objects. The fence behind the church is now clean of tributes.

But the people are compelled to leave their messages, tributes, art, and artifacts. And so they go to a gray, plywood wall on the south edge of the site. It gets covered with words and objects; then (sadly) the wall gets painted gray again; then they come back and cover it again.

I watched people from all over the world spend a long time — 10, 20 minutes each — contemplating what to write on the wall and writing it.

They write poems. They draw pictures. They send heartfelt messages to New York. They leave paintings. They hang up flowers. They leave pieces of themselves, because they clearly feel they must.

Here is a gallery of some of the people and some of what they have to say at the World Trade Center memorial wall.

The Jessica Lynch story
: The Washington Post does an admirable job of trying to cut through bombast and slant to know what is known about the story of Pfc. Jessica Lynch.

Euroblather
: I point you to informative discussion going on in the comments below — from Harry Hatchet, Reiner Behrends, Mitch H, and others — regarding Europe and free speech.

Iran and its 10,000 Salam Paxes
: Drums are beating for something happening in Iran on July 9, when prodemocracy demonstrations are planned.

Andrew Sullivan calls for turning blogwide attention on Iran leading up to July 9. I’m all for that. He asks bloggers to make their own plans and send them to him.

My plan: I will continue to link to prominent bloggers from Iran who write in English and I suggest that you start doing the same. As our network of links widen, we will bring more of the world’s attention to these people, some of whom are reporting from the scene; they are Iran’s Salam Paxes. And as I’ve learned from doing this, we will also build bridges of communication and understanding (don’t worry, I won’t be cueing the Pete Seger music). That is our greatest power, our only power and their only power: the power of our links.

: So here is my latest list of Iranian webloggers:

> Lady Sun is a student who reports directly from Tehran. Her writing is personal and powerful, compelling and convincing:

“The riots are declining. Dormitories are evacuated and in ruins. Examinations are suspended. Students are wounded, not only physically, but very much emotionally and mentally….

I am bitter, sentimentally angry, and dreadfully sad. Monarchists are killing themselves rambling about a new revolution, a protest, an opposition

Fact-checking
: Harry Hatchet says he is fact-checking my ass on my Europhobia below (relating to a “right of reply” that will be granted against online media).

Harry says the report to which we’re all reacting is false.

But I’m not so sure.

The issue is that the regulation deleted the word “professional” before “on-line media.” Here’s the text:

the term “professional on-line media” means any natural or legal person or other entity whose [main] professional activity is to engage in the collection, dissemination, editing and/or dissemination of information to the public on a regular basis via the Internet, such as on-line news portals or bulletins…

The real question is whether a court could then fit a weblog under that definition. Still seems to me, it could.

Harry also points out that this European bureaucracy is not part of the bigger EU bureaucracy. I stand corrected. But how many bureaucracies do Europeans need?

And Harry wonders what the problem is with publications running corrections and replies? No problem; any self-respecting journalist — or, yes, weblogger; hell any civilized person — should do that. That’s not the problem. The problem is that once government decrees what you can and should and should not say and how and where you say it, you lose freedom of speech.

Here’s the proposed regulation.

And here’s Harry’s post. Note that I give him the right to reply without being stormed by EuroInfoPolice.

And see my comments; more good fact-checking there.

We link, you decide.