1. april 2003

Propaganda, too Mamoun Fandy takes a critical look at the propaganda fed to the Arabs through independent TV networks like al-Jazeera: Why do the Arab TV networks accept the Iraqi narrative lock, stock and barrel? State-owned satellite news channels such as al-Jazeera and Abu Dhabi TV are very recent creations. Al-Jazeera, the oldest such channel in the Gulf, did not exist during the first Persian Gulf War. Based in Qatar, it was established in 1996. Al-Arabiya, based in Dubai, is only three months old. The people who work at these stations were by and large recruited from state-owned television networks throughout the Arab world. Thus, they are reacting to their own past. While they were working in state TV they no doubt felt oppressed; now they have somewhat more freedom. But they are pushing the envelope, as are their colleagues at entertainment channels such as Lebanon's al-Mustaqbal and LBC TV, which have added some war coverage to their schedule. Before the war, Future and LBC competed over whose belly-dancers showed more skin. Now it's about who will show the most Iraqi civilian blood and American casualties. Now, as Egyptian TV producer Jamal Enyat told me, "it is political nudity," or what some call "political porno," that is dominating their screens. Read the whole thing. It's certainly not better reporting on the other side. 10:07:27 PM    comment []

Iraq-o-meter Somebody has put up a web page with a fancy flash graph listing the death & destruction in the Iraq war, and some other factoids. E.g. the coalition has suffered 56 fatalities, they have taken 5,950 Iraqi war prisoners and 584 civilians are killed. They say they rely on the normal news sites for information. How they analyse the often conflicting claims is a bit unclear, so take it with a grain of salt like all reporting in this (and every other) war. 6:51:44 PM    comment []

Rumsfeld vs Pentagon Here is the much debated article in the New Yorker about an alleged rift between Donald Rumsfeld and the Pentagon leading up to the Iraq war. We have already seen both Rumsfeld and General Franks vehemently deny these claims, but of course they couldn't do otherwise, could they? The claims in this article surely fits the known facts as seen from the outside. 3:22:50 PM    comment []

Ruff ruff to you, too! Jeremy Gilchrist exercised his right to free speech, or free yelping, when he barked back at a police dog, the 4th Ohio District Court of Appeals has ruled. Gilchrist encountered a barking dog in a police cruiser when he was out walking with some friends (of course, you don't do stupid things like that while alone) and he barked back at it to be funny. The dog worked itself into a frenzy in a dog vs men barking match, and the police did not see the humour of the situation. However, a series of courts have ruled that he actually exercised his right to free speech. City prosecutor Lisa Eliason has not yet decided if she has wasted enough of the taxpayers money. 2:59:32 PM    comment []

New security bit for IPv4 headers RFC 3514 is released today, giving IP headers a new format that will vastly improve security on the Net. The document explains: To solve this problem, we define a security flag, known as the "evil" bit, in the IPv4 [RFC791] header.  Benign packets have this bit set to 0; those that are used for an attack will have the bit set to 1. Brilliant solution, not? Wonder why nobody thought of this earlier. 2:40:34 PM    comment []

Today's topic pointer If you came to this blog to read about the "time traveller" Andrew Carlssin, this is the place. Welcome! Feel free to look around now that you're here. 1:52:20 PM    comment []

And again... The recently updated list here on Salon blogs are not updated for those of us hosted here. Extremely annoying, since it means nobody can see which blogs have been updated. In the events log, I see the following error: Can't upstream because "The server, rcs.salon.com, returned error code 4: Can't find a sub-table named "item #1"." Luckily, the entry is upstreamed. But nobody will know that from the outside... Our entries on www.weblogs.com are not updated either. 1:48:21 PM    comment []

"Idol" knows controversy brings headlines The number of contestants in the Idol shows worldwide that has been kicked off the show after the producers "discover" something from their past points to one obvious conclusion: The producers do this on purpose. They look for a number of contestant that has something negative in their past (or, as was the case here in Norway recently, are too young), so they can kick them out later. Why? Because they know that whenever they do this, they create headlines, which is free advertising for the show. American Idol is produced by Fox, a network widely known for having no morals whatsoever. 12:25:30 PM    comment []

Anger over coalition use of DU The French scientist Gerrard Huillible has published an article finally documenting that ammunition using Depleted Uranium, widely used by coaltion forces in the Iraq war, is dangerous. By investigating a number of suspected targets of DU munitions, he could document that the projectiles tore up vehicles, and in many cases the personell exposed to DU munitions were seriously injured. "It is shocking that civilised nations still use weapons that can cause death and injury," the Dr Huillible said. French and German representatives in the European Parliament are working to enact a binding ban on not only DU, but all ammunition that can result in damage and injury. 11:53:08 AM    comment []

No nudes, please Japanese game maker Tecmo is pretending to be angry at people who hack their XBox game Dead or Alive: Xtreme Beach Volleyball so that the already scantily clad women appear totally nude. In a message on the official forums, the developers asked people to not post nude patches on the Net, and warned: Please do not post anything about nude patches and other hacked information or you will be punished to the fullest extent of the law. So far we're tracking one suspect, anybody care to be the second? One user, Leviathan, retorted that if they were really serious about prosecuting people for the nude patches, it would be a peace of cake to find 1000, not one, suspect. Never has anybody made more fuss over so little textiles. 11:44:33 AM    comment []

Word of the day I think it is safe to say that George Bush misunderestimated Saddam Hussein, bringing us all full circle. 11:05:09 AM    comment []

The ratio of love: 1.09 Anthropologist Dr Boguslaw Pawlowski is arguing that before you look at the face or body shape of a possible partner, you look at the height. Almost no woman wants a man smaller then herself, and men shy away from taller women. The ideal ratio of the height of a woman to a man, he says, is 1 to 1.09. 10:46:57 AM    comment []

US soldiers kill family At least seven Iraqi civilians were shot dead by US soldiers at a checkpoint when a car failed to stop. While the US military officially says the soldiers did the right thing, there are conflicting information, and the military is investigating. Contrary to official sources, William Branigin of the Washington Post, embedded with the division, says the army unit failed to fire warning shots. "You just [expletive] killed a family because you didn't fire a warning shot soon enough!" the paper quotes Captain Ronny Johnson as telling his platoon leader. The platoon leader keeps insisting he fired warning shots. The incident took place not far from a suicide bombing that killed four US soldiers. 10:01:47 AM    comment []

Microsoft gives away free XP wi-fi update Microsoft is giving away a free wireless upgrade for Windows XP that supports Wi-Fi Protected Access (WPA) with better security. 1:31:36 AM    comment []

© Copyright 2003 Jan Haugland. Last update: 01.05.2003; 02:58:48.