There’s more than one happy update to relay in the GoogleBombing campaign to reclaim Jew from anti-Semitic lunatics:

1. For the moment, at least, the bombing campaign seems to be an unqualified success (and how many bombing campaigns can you say that about?). As of midnight tonight, the Wikipedia article is the top search result for Jew. Mazel tov!

2. Googe has done exactly the right thing–by acknowledging the controversy and using their normal ad space at the top of the search results to post a link to a sympathetic, informative article. While they (quite rightly!) explain why they cannot respond to online petitions and e-mails urging them to remove the link from their database, or otherwise put their finger on the search result scales, they do an admirable job of explaining what happened, condemning anti-Semitism, and providing links to some informative discussions of online anti-Semitism.

   This is good news on more than one front. It is, for one, an effective guarantee that even if Jew Watch jumps back up to the top rank, there will still be a link above it offering responsible information and some context on the results. It’s also important, I think, that they made clear their reasons for not manually tilting the results in any way. As someone apparently deemed too hot for Google’s AdWords, I’m not too hot on setting a precedent for getting sites removed from Google proper on the basis of content deemed unacceptable by enough people to mount a pressure campaign. And while I certainly understand and sympathize with the people who want Jew Watch removed, I think the best thing to do is to recognize Google for what it is: a gargantuan link-aggregating reputation manager for webbed information. Google search results are as reliable as they usually are because they are based on what millions of web authors cite as reliable information; the best thing to do, then, is not to push for editorial tilting of the system, but rather to use it to our advantage. Why lobby Google when you can do something about it yourself–by doing nothing more than throwing up your own citation of the WikiPedia article as a source of good, relevant information on the term Jew? (Some have pointed to GoogleBombing as the sign of weakness in Google’s algorithm that can be gamed. I couldn’t disagree more: Google works as well as it does precisely because of the fact that it is especially responsive to what large numbers of people are citing as relevant information on the topic, and GoogleBombing just is a co-ordinated citation campaign. So drop the petitions, and pick up some bombs–three cheers for direct action!)

3. Finally, in an even better development, it appears that the Jew Watch site has gone off the Internet, for the time being at least (must be some of that dastardly Jewish Mind Control at work!). Their front page has been replaced by ISP boilerplate. Here’s hoping that their site has indeed been yanked, as it appears it may have been, and that this is the beginning of a long and distinguished non-existence!

Besides doing the good deed of using his web space at Austro-Athenian Empire to support the GoogleBombing for objective, sane information in searches for Jew, Roderick Long also reports a facet of the site that shan’t be linked which I hadn’t noticed before. Not only is it a raving anti-Semitic conspiracy site, but it also lists the following devilries as Jewish Mind Control: anarchism, unionism, civil rights, and homosexuality. (Feminism is not explicitly listed here, but it is described elsewhere as a cultural concoction of the ADL (!)–which I guess amounts to reproach beyond any possible appeal in Nazi Bizarro World.) So by supporting the GoogleBombing you are not only striking a blow against anti-Semitism; you’re also striking a blow against its kith and kin–patriarchy, homophobia, racism, statism, and the oppression of workers.

So fie on fascism, and here’s to Jewish Mind Control!

At last, a bombing campaign that I can support.

As it turns out, certain anti-Semitic imbeciles have gotten their nutsoid conspiracy site (charmingly entitled JewWatch, which I shan’t link here, lest it throw off the GoogleBombing) listed as the number one site returned by a Google search for the word Jew.

But there’s a campaign afoot–just in time for Passover–and that is about to change.

Sporadic GoogleBombing sorties have been lighting up LiveJournal for a the past few days; today, Alas, A Blog is letting loose, and the campaign is spreading out through other political weblogs. It’s time for a ruthless carpet-bombing of the whole area. So, if you have a web page or weblog, and if you prefer objective, factual information about Jews to raving fascist conspiracy theorists, here is how you can help out:

1. Go to your webpage, weblog, LiveJournal, or anything else that Google can see. If you don’t have one, get one — set up a free website from Geocities, Angelfire, Pitas, BlogSpot, or wherever you like. It doesn’t matter where. Just sprinkle it with a bit of personal information (or put up that huge site you’ve always dreamed of), and remember to add the Google bombing code somewhere on your page (see below). You can help even more by helping to spread the idea further: provide a link back to this page or to the post from Alas, A Blog, or provide your own explanation of what the GoogleBomb is and how people can get involved.

2. Somewhere in the HTML on your site, include the following snippet. You can either include it in the HTML of updates themselves, or in the linkroll. The more frequently you update your site with this HTML snippet present on it, the better the results:

   <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jew" title="WikiPedia: Jew">Jew</a>

   Which will result in a link like this:

   Jew

3. Add the URI for your website to Google if you haven’t already.

And from there, watch the magic of precision GoogleBombing work!

Onwards!

–The Management

P.S. You may notice that I have added a Precision Bombing section to the linkroll for all my pages; this drastically boosts the number of pages supporting the GoogleBomb, and also ensures that the support won’t drop when my initial post scrolls down past the bottom of the front page.

Ten years ago this week, a campaign of terror began in which over 800,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus were slaughtered by Hutu extremists, mostly armed with machetes, garden hoes, and spiked clubs. Thousands of women were raped; many of them now live with AIDS. Thousands of children were orphaned. In the terrible slaughter that followed, spurred by hate propaganda broadcast by the French-backed Hutu government, it is estimated that about 8,000 people were killed every single day of the rampage.

Also, some white dude offed himself.

Guess which event is memorialized on the covers of dozens of glossy magazines all over the newsstand? And guess which one is being described as the unique event of suffering that defined a generation of American youth?

If I have to listen to one more self-important 20-something journalist waxing nostalgic about his teenage ennui and how Kurt spoke to it, I am going to go out into the street and start systematically knocking people’s hats off.

Germaine Greer, the Camille Paglia of the early 1970s, has decided that now, in light of the disturbing revelations of pervasive sexual violence in Australian sporting culture earlier this month, is the perfect time for the saucy feminist that even men like to make her triumphant return to the top of the pop anti-feminist slag heap.

feministe has had the unpleasant experience of being disillusioned with Greer; having first encountered her through The Complete Woman rather than her earlier manifestations she made the understandable mistake of thinking that Greer is a feminist. [Now she’s understandably pissed about the whole thing ](http://www.feministe.us/blog/archives/000815.php “feministe: What The Hell Is Wrong With Germaine Greer?”) :

Once among my favorite feminist authors, Germaine Greer gets particularly disgusting in this article, referring to sports groupies as rape fodder and asserting that athletes who rape are only succumb[ing] to the groupies’ onslaught.

And this. This! Good god, woman.

They’re not embarrassed to say they agreed to sex with one man they’d only just met, or even with two, but they insist that they hadn’t agreed to being brutalised, insulted or humiliated, and they want redress.

(Editor’s note: yes, Greer actually wrote that with a straight face. I checked myself. You would assume that something has to have been taken out of context here, but it hasn’t. Back to feministe:)

. . .

Frowning upon these girls’ perceived sexual immorality hardly absolves athletes of rape.

And when you say things like this,

Now that the women are beefing and the papers are printing and wives are walking out, the players are more vulnerable than ever.

I want to yank the F-card right out of your damn wallet.

I do have one bone to pick with the commentary that has gone around from feministe and others, though. It’s a mistake to say that Greer’s article is one long exercise in victim-blaming. In fact, Greer is not just absolving rapists and haranguing survivors over their alleged sexual proclivities. She’s also tarring rape survivors who speak out as gold-diggers, too:

They might well be insisting on the right to free expression of their own desires, which include shagging the odd hyper-fit footballer, provided he doesn’t abuse the privilege. But they also seem quite interested in another factor in sex with footballers – namely, indecent amounts of money.

The chances of a conviction for rape, in a case where footballers have had sex with a half-drunk woman, say, are virtually nil, but the chances for a significant pay-off from the club or the individual players are good.

I would say something more at this point, but I’ve already quoted four paragraphs from Greer, and I’m left with the feeling that just quoting says everything that needs to be said.

And not in a good way, either.