27. mai 2003

Britain skeptical to EU 'constitution' The draft constitution proposed by a committee chaired by Valery Giscard d'Estaing is meeting opposition in Britain. The tories are deeply Euro-skeptical as always, but Blair's government is also saying it will block a number of proposals that will make Britain's laws subject to EU rulings. The draft proposals include calls for an elected EU president and foreign minister, and backing for a common foreign policy. The fiasco in the Iraq debate shows that the idea of a common foreign policy in the EU is a pipedream. How can anyone perceive that countries like Britain, France, Germany, Poland and Italy can have the same foreign interests in all cases? 11:26:21 PM    comment []

Success in Malaria vaccine test Recent success in tests of a Malaria vaccine may also show some promise in targeting TB and HIV, and even cancer. These diseases are not easy to target with conventional vaccinations, since the pathogens hide inside cells, out of reach for antibodies. Errant cells, infected or cancerous, are normally targeted by the body's T cells, who haven't been very eager to cooperate with vaccinations. This new test, injecting humans with scraps of DNA from a malaria parasite and from a harmless virus containing different malaria DNA, has made the body produce five to ten times more anti-malaria T cells. Such a result would probably reduce the likelyhood of malaria infection by 80%, and could also keep HIV in check. 10:36:03 PM    comment []

Abu Mazen pulls out of meeting with Ariel Sharon The Palestinian Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas, better known as Abu Mazen (picture), has pulled out of talks with Israel's Prime Minister Ariel Sharon. The official explanation is 'scheduling difficulties' but it is a badly hidden secret that Mazen is dissatisfied with Israel's refusal to make any early concessions, and Sharon's constant denunciation of the Palestinain Authority as 'terrorists.' Both parties downplay the cancellation, insisting the meeting is merely postponed, even though no new date is announced. On the Israeli side, Arial Sharon is attacked from the right for using the term 'occupation' when referring to the Palestinian areas. This, they see, is a term that might come back to haunt them, as Israel has never previously called it occupation. Israeli right-wingers have claimed the entire country belongs to them, either by referring to religious myths or security concerns. If Israel admits it is an occupation, it may be open to international legal action and adverse UN declarations. 9:52:46 PM    comment []

Fundies target Muslims for conversion A growing group of American evangelical Christians see Islam as the enemy, and they intend to target Muslims for conversion. "Here in the Koran, it says slay them, slay the infidels!" said the teacher, who said he did not want to be identified because being a missionary to Muslims put his life at risk. "In the Bible there are no words from Jesus saying we should kill innocent people." Note the two qualifying expressions: "words from Jesus" and "innocent people." The two holy books are at least similar in the respect that they promise swift and horrible death and eternal torture to unbelievers (and, somewhat unlike the Bible's attitude to other religions, the Koran actually has some recognition of Judaism and Christianity). Even so, contrary to what the preacher claims, Jesus clearly said he intended to have unbelievers killed. But, of course, to neither religion's extremists is an unbeliever an 'innocent.' 8:15:31 PM    comment []

So much for anti-terror filters Fredrik Refvem, a photgrapher with the Norwegian newspaper Aftenbladet, thought his vacation was arranged when he paid his vacation on his online bank system. Luckily, while travelling he checked his email, and was astonished to find an email from the bank that this payment to a Danish travel agent was cancelled due to 'sanctions against words you have used in the payment.' The reason was that he had an account in the Swedish-owned Skandiabanken, which had been sent a list of words from the Swedish police that they were required to check international payments against. The name of the travel agent, a company renting out vacation houses, was Danland. And on the list of dubious words was NLA, a name used by the Albanian liberation movement, also known as UCK. DaNLAnd. There you go. The holiday payment was trapped as an attempt to transfer money to a terrorist organisation. The bank has later, they claim, changed the system so it doesn't reject the letter combinations when they are part of other words. That, of course, does nothing to help making payments to the countless legal organisations across the world using the same acronyms. Nla.no, for one, is the address of the Norwegian School of Religion and Education, hardly a terrorist front. Perhaps even more worrisome is that the Swedish police obviously subscribes to the idea that people wanting to make payments to a terrorist organisation would indicate its proper name on the money transfer. The bank says no contact was made to the police about Refvem's holiday plans. (from a Norwegian article in Aftenbladet) 7:53:14 PM    comment []

Bullish on antiques A bull went on a rampage in an antiques shop in Lancashire, England, destroying a number of valuable items. The destruction ended when a police marksman shot the bull, which had just escaped from a local auction mart. ...it had been looking for a china shop, and got lost. 9:02:23 AM    comment []

— No new confirmed Sars cases in Toronto Doctors are playing down the dangers of Sars in Toronto, saying any new cases, of which none are confirmed, are confined to existing clusters. At least 20 health workers are currently being monitored for possible infection. The Sars epidemic has hit a large number of health workers worldwide. 8:58:01 AM    comment []

— US plans to turn Guantanamo Bay into a death camp Officials at the US extrajudicial prison camp at Guantanamo Bay has revealed that they are considering setting up a death row and execution chamber. Prisoners can be tried (without jury, without appeal) and executed without ever leaving the camp. Human rights activists, already enraged at the prison camp keeping people detained indefinately without any legal safeguards, are naturally horrified. EU countries, including Britain, opposes the death penalty. In another development, the Observer reported that up to 3,000 Iraqis are kept gagged, bound, hooded and beaten near Baghdad, and that the International Red Cross has been denied access to them, in blatant violation of the Geneva convention. 5:06:10 AM    comment []

Nimda virus caused more damage than USS Cole attack? Rob Rosenberger has a comparison making it pretty obvious that nobody really believes that computer viruses cause as much damage as some reports say. 4:17:15 AM    comment []

View from the top! You should not miss this page with a 360° panorama view from the top of Mt Everest (req. qt). Allow for some time to load, and then you can rotate the image with the mouse. Breathtaking, even if you don't need extra oxygen. 3:40:09 AM    comment []

Sharon the dove? It is not the first time people have expressed amazement that the arch-hawk Ariel Sharon is beginning to borrow some of the arguments and rhetoric of peace advocates in Israel. In defending his acceptance of the "road map" against attacks from the right wing in his own Likud party, he is certainly beginning to sound the part: "You may not like the word, but what's happening is occupation," Mr. Sharon told Likud members of Parliament. "Holding 3.5 million Palestinians is a bad thing for Israel, for the Palestinians and for the Israeli economy. We have to end this subject without risking our security." With upcoming meetings between Sharon and the Palestinian Prime Minister Abu Mazen, and also a summit between the two and George Bush, it looks like the parties are dedicated to implementing of the road map. But then, it looked good for the Oslo accords for some time, too. I still wonder how Abu Mazen is planning to stop the Palestinian terror attacks, certainly a precondition for moving forward with the process. 2:47:05 AM    comment []

Lies, damn lies and gun advocacy Back in February, I wrote about the disclosure that John Lott Jr, the gun advocate who wrote More Guns, Less Crime in 1998, had made up the online persona Mary Rosh to bolster his case. I also made note of the fact that other scholars are unable to replicate the statistical trends that Lott claims to see, and that Lott has come up with some creative excuses to not put his raw data on the table. Even if Lott is not an outright fraud (which the evidence so far suggests he is), he is certainly not a scholar, and he is a using unethical methods and sloppy research. A more recent article in Reason summarises the case, and makes an argument that blogs can be compared to open source systems. In today's fast moving media world, few journalists can dedicate enough time to one story to unwind a complex plot. Bloggers, on the other hand, crosslink and engage in a form of cooperative reporting that makes every story better than any of the individual blogs. I see a trend here. Blogs are bad news for anyone named "Lott." 2:25:47 AM    comment []

© Copyright 2003 Jan Haugland. Last update: 01.06.2003; 03:31:58.