2. juli 2003

Berlusconi compares German parliamentary to nazi prison guard Many Europeans have been uneasy about the controversial Italian prime minister Silvio Berlusconi taking over the rotating EU presidency, and today's row in the European Parliament will not reduce fears. Mr Berlusconi's outburst came as he rounded on a German Socialist MEP, Martin Schulz, who had criticised his business and political conduct. "I know there is a man producing a film on the Nazi concentration camps," Mr Berlusconi said. "I shall put you forward for the role of Kapo (guard chosen from among the prisoners) - you'd be perfect." Berlusconi refused to apologise, and only after Germany delivered a formal protest did he sort-of withdraw the statement, calling it a "joke." The man has some sense of humour, doesn't he? 11:19:23 PM    comment []

Half of Swiss deaths called 'suicide' A major study concludes that 51% of all deaths in Switzerland is a result of 'end-of-life decisions.' While only 0.27% of the deaths were caused by deliberate administration of deadly cocktails by doctors, it is common to increase pain killer doses beyond what is safe when death is considered inevitable anyway. It is thought a growing number of foreigners travelling to Switzerland for help to commit suicide is boosting the figures. The study, which was carried out in 2001 and 2002 and is the first of its kind in Europe, found Swiss doctors were co-operating with patients’ requests to be allowed to die in several ways. Swiss authorities are considering banning foreigners from getting help from groups like Dignitas, which is administering help with suicide for terminally ill people. This has attarcted "suicide tourists" from all over the world to the country. 10:48:31 PM    comment []

Sex while driving legal in Germany, just don't run away A 23 year old man was having sex with a blonde hitchhiker while driving his car in 100 kph (60 mph) on the autobahn, and crashed into a sign. However, a somewhat bewildered judge had to conclude the man hadn't broken any law. What they could get him for, thought, was running away from the incident. He was fined 600 euros, and also ordered to pay 400 euros for the damage to the sign. "The man was convicted of hit-and-run and sentenced to a fine of 600 euros," court spokesman Juergen Mannebeck said on Tuesday. "It's hard to believe but in fact no law was broken with the intercourse on the motorway. It's a situation lawmakers never thought about." The blonde was not found. He did not know her name, even though she had left her clothes in the car. It shouldn't be that hard to find a blonde, nude hitchhiker, even in Germany. 9:00:42 AM    comment []

2002 Stella Awards Here are the winners and runners-ups of the Stella Awards for 2002, for people who have misused the US court system by filing insane lawsuits. #7, who sued an airline for having been seated next to a fat man on a plane. #6, James Brown's children, who sued for compensation for allegedly having helped him write hit songs #5, a prison inmate who sued for not letting him practice his religion "druidic vampirism." #4, an obese, cigarette smoking woman who sued her doctors for "not doing enough" to make her kick her bad habits #3, a man who changed his name to "Jack Ass" in 1997 sued MTV for plagiarizing his name in the TV show and movie "Jackass." #2, sued a doctor for prescribing a drug that had not harmed her at all, just to earn a few bucks. And, finally, the winners, sisters Janice Bird, Dayle Bird Edgmon and Kim Bird Moran, who sued their mother's doctors and hospital for having witnessed the mother being taken to the emergency room, which allegedly caused them "emotional distress." The case was fought all the way to the California Supreme Court, which finally ruled against the women. Which is a good thing, since if they had prevailed doctors and hospitals would have had no choice but to keep you from being anywhere near your family members during medical procedures just in case something goes wrong. In their greed, the Bird sisters risked everyone's right to have family members with them in emergencies. A well-deserved award, won in the face of strong competition. Too bad they are not forced to pay damages corresponding to what they wanted to inflict on others. 8:05:14 AM    comment []

Deep south hypocrisy Apparently, the late Senator Strom Thurmond had a black illegitimate daughter. 6:48:28 AM    comment []

Journalists and spies Philip Bobbitt, who was a director for intelligence programmes at the US National Security Council and a legal counsel for the Senate during the Iran-contras affair, has a comment to the British "scandal" of the Iraq weapons dossier. He would give some pause to journalists if they bothered to stop and check facts. So it is not whether a journalist can find a single dissenter, but rather what the community, through its collaborative procedures, produces. In Britain, the joint intelligence committee is the vehicle for those procedures, and its head, John Scarlett, is much respected among intelligence officials. Unless he, and his committee, have completely gone off the rails in an effort to propitiate No 10, then charges about a cooked estimate based on a leaking dissenter are misplaced. Bobbit also rejects as pretty absurd, as I have done in this blog, the whole mess over the "plagiarised" part of the Iraq dossier. Second, intelligence assessments do not deal exclusively with secrets nor rely exclusively on clandestine sources and methods. The issue of the "dodgy dossier" seems to be that one of the estimates was prepared using unattributed material from a decade-old PhD dissertation, and not that the material was false. This seems to betray a broad misunderstanding of the intelligence product. Exactly. As the world has become more open, and more and more data is put in electronic form, reliance on open sources has become much more important. I am not so dismissive of the fact that the article was unattributed as he is, though. In the intelligence world naming sources in reports is not very important (in fact, it may be a very bad idea) but once a document is made public, there are other rules. Yet, the press has betrayed massive ignorance and not very little malice when rejecting the dossier out of hand just because a part of it came from an open source. 6:02:13 AM    comment []

Guess which flag is missing! Blogger dissident frogman has just been to Normandy in France where he took a number of pictures, including the above. It is the flagpoles outside the museum dedicated to the Battle of Normandy, 1944. Now guess which flag was missing. Bingo. That was not all, unfortunately. As he shows on a number of other pictures, the stars and stripes were also suspiciously absent from the lapel pin display and a pedestal on the museum's checkout. The flags of France, the UK and Canada were present in all cases. I guess people should wait for a proper response from the memorial museum before jumping to conclusions. I hope there is a good explanation for this. Unlike many others, more cynical than me, I will not easily believe that the French officials of a museum dedicated to D-Day would be spitting on the graves of thousands of young men who died to liberate France from the nazis. 5:06:24 AM    comment []

Staring at the sun, again I am receiving quite a few google hits on something I wrote some time ago on Indian mechanical engineer Hira Ratan Manek, alias Hirachand, who claims to be able to sustain his life on only sunshine and some liquid diet. Recently, essentially the same claims have resurfaced, and again it is NASA that allegedly has tested his sunlight diet. This 64-year-old mechanical engineer has been tried and tested by US space agency NASA. In June 2002, NASA verified his claims when he spent 130 days with its scientists drinking only water. They have even named such subsistence — water and solar energy — the 'HRM (Hira Rattan Manek) phenomenon'. Now NASA wants him to show them how he does it. They hope to use the technique to solve food storage and preservation problems on space expeditions. So on Friday, Hirachand left for New York. Of course, none of these reports mention anything about who at NASA allegedly tested and verified his claims. His name is not mentioned on NASA's site, in scientific papers or science news publications on the net. The story has made it into innumerable newspapers and web sites promoting various "alternative" ideas, though. Do we smell a scam? Of course. And not even a very new one. I am not the only one smelling the scam, as I have also received google hits on my story about the Welsh fasting girl Sarah Jacob, who became a celebrity in the 19th century when she claimed to go for months without food. Sceptical doctors back then set a 24-hour watch on her to disprove her claims, and tragically she died from starvation shortly afterwards. Not only nutritional experts should be surprised at the claims of Hira Ratan Manek, eye doctors will also take exception to his recommendation of staring at the sun unprotected for an hour. Staring at the sun can severly damage your eyes (yes, your mom was right on that count). So don't try this at home. And don't fall for every hoax you hear. 4:20:11 AM    comment []

Rio de Janeiro most friendly city Robert Levine of California State University at Fresno and a group of social psychologists have conducted a six-year study of how the people in the world's cities behave towards strangers, and Brazil's Rio de Janeiro came out on top, followed by San Jose in Costa Rica and Madrid in Spain. "It all comes down to simpatico, a Brazilian word that describes a person who possesses certain qualities such as friendliness and openness," New Scientist said on Wednesday. The least simpatico city in the world was Kuala Lumpur, followed by New York, Singapore and Amsterdam. When the researchers conducted tests of the willingness of residents to help strangers, they found that Latin American cities, where social relationships are highly valued, came out on top. Many of the poorest and least stable cities were the friendliest while people in overcrowded, fast paced ones were less likely to help strangers. "This suggests environment has a greater influence than ethnicity or cultural background," the magazine said. Researchers also concluded that people in overcrowded environments tend to cope by "ignoring emergency situations and depersonalising strangers." 1:37:44 AM    comment []

The US plans super-weapons The Pentagon is planning new weapons that allows the US to strike at its enemies worldwide without forward bases. It is inviting contractors to bid on long-term development projects under the code-name Falcon (Force Application and Launch from the Continental US). The Falcon technology would "free the US military from reliance on forward basing to enable it to react promptly and decisively to destabilising or threatening actions by hostile countries and terrorist organisations", according to the Darpa invitation for bids. The ultimate goal would be a "reusable hypersonic cruise vehicle (HCV) ... capable of taking off from a conventional military runway and striking targets 9,000 nautical miles distant in less than two hours". The two key weapons are a hypersonic unmanned plane that can be launched from continental US and hit anywhere within a few hours, and a bomb that can be dropped from space with devastating effect. Both projects are extremely ambitious technologically, and may take 20 years to develop. In the meantime, however, Pentagon plans somewhat less ambitious systems to provide some of the same capabilities with expendable rockets. My question: Why not reassign some ICBMs to a conventional role? 12:48:17 AM    comment []

© Copyright 2003 Jan Haugland. Last update: 01.08.2003; 01:51:24.