| |
|
10. september 2003
|
|
Man castrated son's rapist
When the 49-year-old Argentinian Miguel Angel Montiel learned that a homeless man had beated up and tried to rape his handicapped son, he took a knife and cut the man's balls and penis off. He then went to the police to give himself up.
Now Montiel, who faces serious charges, receives massive support.
Some 97% of respondents to a newspaper poll said they backed the actions of 49-year-old Miguel Angel Montiel.
Not hard to sympathise with the man's feelings and anger, but do we really want people running around with knives to take the law into their own hands? For one, how many angry fathers would castrate the first homeless man they saw that fit the description? Courts may not always satisfy our hunger for justice, but they are a heck of a lot better than the alternative.
Still, I wouldn't put the man in jail and throw away the key.
11:43:59 PM 
|
|
How many wrongs make a leftist right?
"BBC political editor Andrew Marr has admitted the corporation suffers from a liberal bias - but claimed the rest of the media is just as bad." (The Guardian)
At least they have a debate about this, and some dissenting news sources, in Britain.
7:35:20 PM
|
|
Should the US invade France to save the elderly?
Blogger Merde in France follows the French media, where there are few voices of dissent to the prevailing anti-Americanism. He has, however, found one.
French media did not report that 7 days have just passed without any American deaths in Iraq and why should they? They only celebrate American deaths in Iraq. Mathieu Lindon, French journalist, penned a column about French attitudes towards US involvement in Iraq in Saturday's Libération (special section apparently not published on the web):
We are very interested in American deaths in Iraq. If we were as passionate about our own elderly, we would have had fewer victims. If the Americans are as moved by our deaths as we are by their deaths, they'll soon make a landing in France to stop the massacre. It's just that, and we will never admit it, every American soldier killed in Iraq causes, if not happiness, at least a certain satisfaction.
Not very different here in Norway, except we don't have such a total breakdown of our health system (or, perhaps we just have more "friendly" weather).
6:45:40 PM
|
|
Sweden's foreign minister stabbed
 Sweden's foreign minister Anna Lindh was attacked by an unknown man and stabbed with a knife on a shopping center in central Stockholm today. According to eye witnesses on the scene, she was injured in the arm, and a man was arrested immediately after the attack. Lindh is taken to hospital. No details have been released by Swedish police or government yet.
The Swedish prime minister Oluf Palme was assassinated by a gunman in 1986, a crime still officially unsolved.
(from a Swedish article in Aftonbladet)
Update: more (conflicting) details on BBC. Some say she was also stabbed in the stomach, but Swedish radio right now says it was only the arm. Nobody knows why she had no bodyguards, or, if she had, how they failed to protect her. Apparently, there are also conflicting information about whether the attacker was taken on the spot.
Anna Lindh, a very popular politician, has been very active in promoting a yes-vote in the upcoming Euro referendum.
This ties sadly into my recent article about the increased violence in Sweden.
5:17:27 PM
|
|
Black holes sing in B flat
In space, nobody can hear the extremely low frequency humming from a large black hole in the Perseus Cluster, 250 million light-years away, but it has probably been singing the tune of B flat for billions of years. The sound is about 57 octaves below middle C, way beyond the human ear.
The "sound" is really ripples in jets of gases created as matter is sucked into the black hole. The ripples are 30,000 light years across, and the "note" is calculated based on the distance between the ripples, probably created by rhythmic squeezing and heating of the cosmic gases.
5:11:40 PM
|
|
Muslim praises independent thought
Islamic expert Bahar Bastani condemned extremism and urged rational thought in a delivery at an interfaith seminary in Kentucky.
"The problem I see in the Muslim community today is lack of free, progressive and innovative thinking," Islamic expert Bahar Bastani said yesterday while speaking on the troubling aspects of religion in the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.
"I see that our people, and in particular our scholars, are afraid to be innovative in their thinking."
By being trapped in old interpretations of religious doctrine and not questioning those interpretations, Bastani said, people are turning their backs on God's gift — independent thought.
"The best gift from God is intelligence and rational mind," he said. "Don't follow things you don't have knowledge of."
This strikes at the heart of the very mindset of fundamentalism. Hopefully, there are more like him.
2:29:12 PM
|
|
Bali suspect sentenced to death
An Indonesian court handed down another death sentence for the Bali bombing that killed more than 200 people, mostly western tourists, in Bali October 12, 2002.
Imam Samudra was sentenced for being a mastermind of the terror operation, and he defiantly shouted "Allahu Akbar" (God is Greater) as he was struggling with police officers taking him out of the courtroom.
Samudra shows no remorse, and while only admitting a "role" and denying masterminding the attacks, said his actions were aimed at hurting "white people." His lawyers say they will appeal the sentence.
2:22:41 PM
|
|
Reconstructing Iraq
Max Boot has been in Iraq, and though there is much work to be done, he came home impressed with the work done and optimistic for the future. In particular he was impressed with the US 1st Marine Division and its commander Major General James Mattis. For one, unlike their army collegues, the marines have suffered no combat deaths since May 1st.
There is no doubt that the Marines' task was made easier by the fact that the Shiites suffered under the old regime and welcomed their liberation. But few analysts predicted in May that Shiite holy cities like Najaf and Karbala would emerge as strongholds of pro-American sentiment. Much of the talk back then was of Iranian infiltration and Lebanese-style terrorism. That hasn't happened, at least not against Americans, and every single Marine I met was convinced that the reason had to do with their approach to peacekeeping, which they believe superior to the more heavy-handed methods employed, at least initially, by Army units that occupied Baghdad and the Sunni area to the immediate north and west.
There is a flip side to this approach, of course. Marines may be interested in winning heart and minds, but nobody should be in doubt what the consequences of hostile action would be.
Their third principle was to be ready to win a 10-second gunfight. While wanting to be as open and friendly as possible, all Marines were told to be ready to open fire at a moment's notice. When Army supply convoys get attacked by fedayeen, they speed away, I was told. When Marine convoys got hit, they were supposed to stop immediately and disgorge infantrymen to pursue the attackers. Mattis insisted that even convoys carrying the Marines out of Iraq retain a robust offensive capability.
It all adds up to Mattis's widely publicized slogan: "No Better Friend, No Worse Enemy" than a U.S. Marine.
As they say, read the whole thing.
4:36:36 AM
|
|
No surrender
Don't miss this brilliant commentary on RIAA's offer of "amnesty" for file sharers from User Friendly.
In a related development, one of the music-swappers just sued by the recording industry is the 12-year old New York City girl Brianna LaHara. Brialliant PR move!
3:47:42 AM
|
|
Beebwatch
The UK's Telegraph is launching a new regular opinion feature called Beebwatch, which is set out to look at the BBC's bias.
No, BBC bias is not a piece of partisan trickery - it is a state of mind. So strong is the state of mind that a great many of the acts of bias, perhaps the majority of them, are quite unconscious. It is time to delve into that unconscious. Hence our Beebwatch, which starts on the opinion pages today.
The BBC's mental assumptions are those of the fairly soft Left. They are that American power is a bad thing, whereas the UN is good, that the Palestinians are in the right and Israel isn't, that the war in Iraq was wrong, that the European Union is a good thing and that people who criticise it are "xenophobic", that racism is the worst of all sins, that abortion is good and capital punishment is bad, that too many people are in prison, that a preference for heterosexual marriage over other arrangements is "judgmental", that environmentalists are public-spirited and "big business" is not, that Gerry Adams is better than Ian Paisley, that government should spend more on social programmes, that the Pope is out of touch except when he criticises the West, that gun control is the answer to gun crime, that... well, you can add hundreds more articles to the creed without my help.
Now, none of the above beliefs is indefensible. The problem is that all of them are open to challenge and that that challenge never comes from the BBC.
I don't watch the BBC's TV broadcasts, but I do listen to BBC World quite a bit on radio, and I have to say the bias is rather extreme, just as described above. The web pages are slightly better, IMO, probably due to the beeb having virtually unlimited webspace, while the TV and radio programmes have limited time, thus allowing the side they sympathise with to almost monopolise it. It will be interesting to follow this column.
For its sheer extent and international correspondent's network, the BBC is great. It is just too bad that there is a corporate culture of one-sided bias. It is in that sense essentially like the Norwegian press, where almost all opinions (expressed or, more often, implied) are stated by journalists only ranging from the radical left to the moderate left. When this is the only voice we hear, the free exchange of ideas so essentual for democracy suffers.
3:32:59 AM
|
|
Bin Laden search narrowed down
According to this article, US and Pakistani intelligence has narrowed down the search for al-Qaeda leader Osama Bin Laden to a 40-square-mile section of the Waziristan region of Pakistan. However, this is an area ruled by local tribes, where the federal government has no say. And needless to say, the people here are very hostile to the US and very friendly to al-Qaeda.
1:22:53 AM
|
|
|
© Copyright 2003 Jan Haugland.
Last update: 01.10.2003; 02:24:23.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
This is my blogchalk:
Norway, Bergen, Norwegian, English, Jan, Male, 31-35.
|
|
|
