Bob Haslanger holds up a photograph of the now-famous scene of jubiliant Iraquis rolling the head from a downed statue of Saddam Hussein.
But the still shot shows what the TV cameras did not – that the public square is nearly empty.
“If you notice, the number of people here is probably less than 100,” Haslanger said. “Donald Rumsfeld said that this was ‘breathaking,’ and for BBC radio it was ‘amazing.’ It turns out there were 100 people brought in by the army.”
Haslanger, irked by what he viewed as the distortion and incomplete coverage of news by mainstream media, turned to an old friend, computer prorammer Jerry George, to talk about putting up a web site.
“I wanted to know ‘how do I present this to people so that they have selection,” Haslanger said.
The answer was a unique web site, Bainbridge Neighbors For Peace, www.bnfp.org, providing concise links to well-chosen articles from publications across the political spectrum – although the predominant flavor is left.
The layout of links leads one to YES Magazine, Mother Jones, The Nation, as well as The New York Times and The Christian Science Monitor.
The site also offers links to a new form of communication, bloggers – from “web log” – folks who keep open diaries online. Some are personal blogs, others are collective.
The pieces fell swiftly in place for Haslanger and George, self-described “geeks for peace.”
“Design? It was almost like it was there,” Jerry said. “We collided and it popped out.”
The particular genius of the site is that it has organized the links so that scores of articles, all local island peace and justice organizations, international news sources, wire services and a range of political perspectives share a home page without overwhelming the user.
“Without leaving the screen you’re on, without navigational hassles, you can expand the information to give you an opinion or a citation,” Haslanger said. “In a typical website, to get that little blurb, you’d have to open up another page.”
In the 19 days the site has been up, it has had visitors from Turkey, Japan, Nicaragua, Canada, Germany, Seychelles, France, and Croatia, Haslanger says.
Higher education networks like M.I.T., Berkeley, University of Washington, University of Michigan, cable networks from around the country including New York, Texas, Alabama, California, and “a surprising number” of United States federal government network connections appear in the web site logs.
For George, working on the web site has upped his own political awareness.
“What Bob did for me,” George said, “he showed me where the enemy was. I was basically unaware and not basically concerned and that changed suddenly. And I hope there are millions of people like myself who have that experience.”
