27. april 2003

Rich Christian men's club A very fascinating article about America's secret theocrats, a more or less informal network of America's rich and powerful Christians. I picked up the link at Raven's. 11:08:44 PM    comment []

The battle against the copyright tyranny: one win, one loss "In an almost complete reversal of previous victories for the record labels and movie studios, federal court Judge Stephen Wilson ruled that Streamcast--parent of the Morpheus software--and Grokster were not liable for copyright infringements that took place using their software " (News.com) "The U.S. government sided with the recording industry in its dispute with Verizon Communications on Friday, saying a digital-copyright law invoked by record labels to track down Internet song-swappers did not violate the U.S. Constitution. " (ZDnet) 8:41:38 PM    comment []

Self-proclaimed 'Mayor of Baghdad' arrested US forces have arrested Mohammed Mohsen al-Zubaidi, who had appointed himself 'mayor' of Baghdad, for sabotaging the coalition's efforts to restore law, order and civil services. The maverick figure has confused many people by claiming to have been elected mayor, without it being entirely clear who elected or appointed him. He has been repeatedly warned against interfering, US forces say, and now he's been arrested and removed from Baghdad. 8:25:33 PM    comment []

Belarus in spotlight Belarus, the former Soviet republic run Soviet-style by its President Alexander Lukashenko, has vehemently denied US accusations of having supplied Iraq with weapons. The country has no significant arms production, but retains a huge stockpile of old weapons from the Soviet Union, exactly the kind of weapons the US met in Iraq. In a more dramatic development, the often well-informed news source DebkaFile claims there is evidence that Saddam Hussein has escaped to the Belarus. 6:21:53 PM    comment []

Newspaper stops journalist's blog Brian Toolan, editor of the Connecticut newspaper Hartford Courant has forced its employee Denis Horgan to discontinue his blog. Horgan was previously a columnist now working in travel, and he put up the blog at his own spare time and expense to cover some of the same issues he had previously been writing about, esentially whatever he liked. Toolan, obviously a control freak, doesn't like the idea at all, and "explains" it like this: "Denis Horgan's entire professional profile is a result of his attachment to the Hartford Courant, yet he has unilaterally created for himself a parallel journalistic universe where he'll do commentary on the institutions that the paper has to cover without any editing oversight by the Courant. That makes the paper vulnerable." The logic of that argument entirely escapes me. 5:13:11 PM    comment []

CIA report "predicted" Sars There were enough dire warnings about the dangers of an international pandemic caused by a combination of a new virus and international air travel. One was a CIA National Intelligence Estimate from January 2000, which said: The next major infectious disease threat to the United States may be, like HIV, a previously unrecognized pathogen. Interestingly, the report also said that governments had a powerful economic incentive to play down the danger of any outbreaks. Some countries hide or understate their infectious disease problems for reasons of international prestige and fear of economic losses. This was at least the initial reaction in China (and, arguably, still is in Canada). The smallpox letters in the US following 9/11-01 lead to increased awareness of the dangers of a bioweapons attack. However, while a lot of the Bush administration's money have found its way to defence and 'homeland security,' the most serious problem with both a man-made and a natural disease attack on the US is that the health services have been underfunded for decades, and Bush certainly doesn't seem interested in addressing that issue. Jim Yong Kim, a public health specialist at Harvard, explains: "In the US, there is not enough public health infrastructure to deal with something like a big SARS outbreak. 'This is a result of years of underfunding and understaffing for public health offices. We are in a war with microbes and the microbes are winning -- handily." Considering that Sars appears to be far from the worst case scenario we could have experienced, perhaps in the long run an increased awareness of the problem will be a good thing? 5:02:19 PM    comment []

Crime is falling, but people don't believe it Crime in Britain has been falling for more than a decade, but 2/3rds of the people believe it is rising. And, as the Observer shows, the more affluent and the older people are, the worse they believe the crime is. And, believeing that the government can do nothing to battle crime, the majority would be willing to accept extreme measures, like having harsher punishments, introducing the death penalty and establishing a national ID card. The dilemma of democracy: what if the majority of the people are ignorant and stupid? 2:34:36 PM    comment []

Newspaper: Documents reveal Saddam-Bin Laden link The Telegraph has been looking for documents in the Mukhabarat, Iraqi intelligence headquarters. The newspaper made a scoop when it found papers showing that British left-wing MP George Galloway took bribes from Saddam's regime. This time they may have made it one better: they claim to have documents showing that there was cooperation between Bin Laden's al-Qaeda network and Saddam Hussein. In March 1998, it says, an al-Qaeda representative was invited to Baghdad for meetings to establish a relationship building on their common hatred for the US and Saudi-Arabia. The newspaper points out that Bush has all the time thought the 9/11 attacks were really tied to Saddam Hussein in some way, even though no such link was found. Tony Blair's government has been more in doubt about this question. The Telegraph is a right-wing newspaper, critics and Galloway apologists have been quick to point out. Naturally, if the evidence is sound, it is just a bonus that disclosures support preconceived opinions, and not a valid excuse for discounting it. 12:03:40 PM    comment []

Relief group: Iraq situation exaggareted Head of International relief group Medecins Sans Frontiers (MSF) Morten Rostrup visited Iraq, and was quite definite that the situation was not at all as bad as many other aid organisations had asserted: We have not seen any signs of famine in Iraq. We have not seen any huge epidemics. We have not seen any mass displacement of people. MSF was one of only two international relief organisations that were in Iraq at the end of the war; the other being the International Red Cross. I just heard an interview on Norwegian radio, and he was quite clear that many relief organisations had made statements without having been in the country. The main problem at the end of the war, Kostrup said, was lack of order and rulership. Just a few hospitals in Baghdad had been looted, he said, while the press had made it appear this applied to all. Aid organisations often have an incentive to exaggarate misery, no doubt because they feel that this is necessary to secure funds. On the other hand, they do need to have the trust of the public. 11:14:42 AM    comment []

New T3 trailer A new trailer for Terminator 3 - Rise of the Machines is released (qt). One word: wow! And that's just the new female terminator. 12:07:04 AM    comment []

© Copyright 2003 Jan Haugland. Last update: 01.05.2003; 03:01:08.