5. august 2003

An American tourist in North Korea Scott Fisher, an American living in South Korea, got a unique opportunity to visit North Korea, or Kimland as he calls it, and brought back pictures and memories from a closed world. Highly recommended! Nods to metafilter. 7:47:41 PM    comment []  trackback []

Backtrack Radio Userland has added TrackBack to its blogging software, and I've updated my blog to support it. If somebody adds a link to an entry in my blog, I should see it here. 5:16:06 PM    comment []  trackback []

And I thought it was just me Hilarious geek humour in How to install Windows XP in 5 hours or less. 4:44:13 PM    comment []  trackback []

More terror in Indonesia At least 13 killed in car bomb attack on the Marriott hotel in Jakarta today, and 'nearly 149' wounded. The hotel is American-owned. The attack coincides with the trial against the Bali suspects is drawing to an end, and many point to the Islamist terror group Jemaah Islamiyah. 2:55:52 PM    comment []  trackback []

Story of Swedish 'WMD find' not gathering momentum The sparse information and the strange circumstances surrounding the possible Swedish find of proscribed weapons in Iraq has not exactly caused a big splash in international press. Ireland Online has picked up the story, and partly through it, it has been mentioned in South Africa's News24, India's The Hindu and WorldNetDaily. Two chemical and biological weapons experts travelled to Iraq to help a television team evaluate information it had obtained about Saddam Hussein’s alleged weapons of mass destruction, said Aake Sellstroem, from the Swedish Defence Research Agency, who authorised the visit. The information indicated Iraq had a programme for making chemical and biological weapons as late as last year, but yielded no clues about whether any actual weapons were made, he said. “What this shows is that there was interest, organisation and activities involving weapons of mass destruction until 2002,” Sellstroem said. “But I haven’t seen any information about how many weapons there were.” Sellstroem, who heads the agency’s weapons of mass destruction research unit, said a TV crew from a Monaco-based production company, World Television Network, requested his help in evaluating information it had received from an unnamed Iraqi source. He said he made the decision to authorise the visit in haste and regretted not informing his superiors or the government about it. As the WTN has not made the hard facts available for scrutiny, and the weapons experts are under a gag contract, it is impossible to know whether this is yet another "almost there" story that will end up in nothing. Well, if it doesn't, you probably read it here first. 10:04:29 AM    comment []  trackback []

al-Qaeda tape talking to itself The al-Qaeda tape with (supposedly) al-Zawahri (picture) threatening the US with horrible things if they harm any of the Guantanamo Bay prisoners have been all over the news lately. What is not altogether clear is why anyone should take this seriously. Sure, al-Qaeda is dangerous and able to inflict real damage to any country, even the US, as it has done in the past. The problem is that these fanatics are determined and dedicated to destroy the US and end all western influence on the Muslim world anyway. The terrorists are breathing, thinking, talking and dreaming death and destruction 24/7, and the only thing stopping them from actually killing all of us is the fact that we are much stronger than them. For an ultimatum with a built-in threat to work, there must be an escape clause. What would happen if the US, theoretically, now released all the Guantanamo prisoners? Would al-Qaeda cancel its terror plans and stop attacking western and Israeli targets? Of course not. These tapes are just propaganda intended for internal consumption by the terrorists's sympathisers. They are telling "yes, we are still here, we are big and tough and mean, and we will kill the enemy Real Soon Now." They are using it to get support and to get money. The "message" to the west, given so much room in the media, is just a sham. They are only pretending to talk to us; they are talking to their own people. 6:21:11 AM    comment []  trackback []

© Copyright 2003 Jan Haugland. Last update: 01.09.2003; 14:08:28.