18. september 2003

Yahoo to messenger users: upgrade or be gone! The Yahoo! Messenger network will no longer carry traffic for users of older versions of the popular IM software after Sept. 24. The company argues it has to forego backwards compatibility to improve service quality and fight spam. 10:30:58 PM    comment []  trackback []

Desperately wanted: Journalistic integrity The NYT's John Burns has some very troubling revelations about how some of his collegues behaved in Iraq. There were correspondents who thought it appropriate to seek the approbation of the people who governed their lives. This was the ministry of information, and particularly the director of the ministry. By taking him out for long candlelit dinners, plying him with sweet cakes, plying him with mobile phones at $600 each for members of his family, and giving bribes of thousands of dollars. Senior members of the information ministry took hundreds of thousands of dollars of bribes from these television correspondents who then behaved as if they were in Belgium. They never mentioned the function of minders. Never mentioned terror. In one case, a correspondent actually went to the Internet Center at the Al-Rashid Hotel and printed out copies of his and other people's stories -- mine included -- specifically in order to be able to show the difference between himself and the others. He wanted to show what a good boy he was compared to this enemy of the state. He was with a major American newspaper. This sort of puts Christiane Amanpour's embarrassing whining about the CNN being "intimidated" into self-censorship by the Bush administration and its Fox News "foot soldiers" into perspective. CNN has admitted earlier that fear of being thrown out of Iraq made them intentionally hide the truth about massive human rights abuses, genocide, mass graves and enormous human suffering. Maybe the CNN (and others) allowed itself to be bullied by the Bush administration, as well as by Saddam Hussein. What does this tell us? It tells us that we can't really trust the media at all. Most of them are willing to be bought or threatened to distort the truth, or will do so willingly to further their own political biases. 9:04:47 PM    comment []  trackback []

The war between the US and France Thomas L. Friedman draws the same conclusion from the French drive to rapidly transfer power to an Iraqi provisional government as I did yesterday: the French government wants the US to fail, and it wants Iraqi democracy to fail. Thus, France has made itself a global adversary of the US and its allies. If you add up how France behaved in the run-up to the Iraq war (making it impossible for the Security Council to put a real ultimatum to Saddam Hussein that might have avoided a war), and if you look at how France behaved during the war (when its foreign minister, Dominique de Villepin, refused to answer the question of whether he wanted Saddam or America to win in Iraq), and if you watch how France is behaving today (demanding some kind of loopy symbolic transfer of Iraqi sovereignty to some kind of hastily thrown together Iraqi provisional government, with the rest of Iraq's transition to democracy to be overseen more by a divided U.N. than by America), then there is only one conclusion one can draw: France wants America to fail in Iraq. France wants America to sink in a quagmire there in the crazy hope that a weakened U.S. will pave the way for France to assume its "rightful" place as America's equal, if not superior, in shaping world affairs. It is, however, a bit unclear what France exactly wants to accomplish by this. Is the French government really this delusional? The great European powers have long known that it must have long-range objectives in foreign policies, no matter which government is actually in power. Britain has, ever since the hundred-years-war, had a primary objective of avoiding the two greatest rival powers, typically France and Germany, to unite. Britain consistently sided with the weaker of the two. That is why it fought against France in the Napoleonic wars, and why it fought with France against Germany in the two world wars in the 20th century. One can also argue that is why it entered the European Union. Until WWII, the British also had the policy of being more powerful at sea than number two and three in the world, combined. When this no longer was feasible, it aligned with the US, the most powerful nation. For Britain, which party is in power is irrelevant: the British realise that you don't mess with the long lines in international affairs for petty partisan reasons. France's foreign policies, while less consistent, have been to expand its influence in the third world, to play catch-up with the British to check its power, and avoid Germany to overpower it in Europe, all with very mixed success. France's one foreign policy success was, ironically, the war with Britain over American independence. Yet, there has been a level of pragmatism even in French international politics. And now, it should clearly be in the French interest to deter the spread of Islamism, especially considered its large and potentially volatile immigrant population. An American disaster in Iraq cannot really be in France's interests, except giving them a reason to gloat. I fear that the Chirac government has abandoned any long-term national interests in its conflict with the US, and that the drive is simply that anti-Americanism is hugely popular in France. While Tony Blair risked his political life to stick to Britain's long-term interests in remaining the US' closest ally, the French president sees a short-sighted gain in domestic popularity in making his country a global adversary of the US. Unless Chirac is truly delusioned enough to believe that this conflict somehow gains France's long-term interests in the world, this is a purely populistic enterprise. 5:38:56 PM    comment []  trackback []

Dog house Animal welfare officers in northern England, acting on a tipoff, discovered 269 animals crammed into a three-bedroom house. It took 26 staff two days to remove the 244 dogs, 16 parrots, 7 cats, one rabbit and one chinchilla from the house. No word on how there was room left for the middle-aged couple who lived there. 4:13:33 PM    comment []  trackback []

Scientific excuse: men get bored with shopping According to a British study, men get bored more easily than women when they go shopping. Well, d'oh! Couples who go shopping together should only do so for 72 minutes or risk an argument, according to researchers. That's the point at which men reach breaking point, but women can go for a further 28 minutes. A report suggests that shopping couples are prone to rows because of different primeval instincts which affect the way they shop. Most male shoppers are defined as "hunters" because they go with the intention of buying specific items and tend to be incisive. Women are generally categorised at "gatherers" who treat bargain hunting as a "discovery", the report says. Men will be thankful forever to Dr Tim Denison, who provided this excuse with some suspiciously bogus science. 3:13:07 PM    comment []  trackback []

Forget valium, get chocolate If you have been grabbing for chocolate and other sweets full of fat and sugar in times of stress, you are actually doing the right thing. The finding, published in the online edition of The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, confirms what many people know firsthand. Eating calorie-rich food seems to calm the nerves, but eating too much can lead to obesity, depression and more stress. This is the first time it has been shown that the tendency to overeat in the face of chronic stress is biologically driven, said Dr. Norman Pecoraro, a postdoctoral fellow at the University of California at San Francisco who helped carry out the research in rats. What is true for stressed-out rats, he said, is also true for humans. In fact, "if you are overly stressed, it's probably a good idea to overeat, at least in the short run," Dr. Pecoraro said. "But if you develop a thick tire of fat around your abdomen, you need to figure out a way to reduce your stress or you'll be inviting all sorts of chronic health problems." Yes, at the time humans evolved, eating too much was hardly a concern. 3:14:47 AM    comment []  trackback []

Hitting the wrong hot button South African parliamentary Alie van Jaarsveld from the New National Party intended to send a steaming hot, and rather direct, mobile text message (SMS) to his girlfriend Reneé Thompson. It read, in Afrikaans: "I long for you. We can't sleep apart. Reneé I am more in love with you than I was with anyone in my life. Come sleep with me please." However, he sent it not to his lover, but to Anne-Marie, his wife of thirty years. They are now being divorced. 1:20:00 AM    comment []  trackback []

Do you remember? "Amid reports the Bush Administration is planning a major statement on Iraq's weapons by mid-September, Mr Armitage urged doubters to await the findings of a new inspection team that has been scouring Iraq in recent weeks, led by former UNSCOM scientist Dr David Kay." (The Age, from Aug. 14) Well, it is now mid-september. 12:10:08 AM    comment []  trackback []

© Copyright 2003 Jan Haugland. Last update: 01.10.2003; 02:24:54.