12. november 2003

Italians targeted in Iraq A suicide bomber in a petrol tanker rammed an Italian police base in Nasiriya today, killing at least 23 people, fourteen of them Italian military and paramilitary personell. Italy's government has said it stands firm on the commitment to rebuild Iraq despite this devastating attack. 6:30:37 PM    comment []  trackback []

Arafat won Palestinian power struggle, again The Palestinian parliament is expected to vote on and approve a cabinet Wednesday. After a long battle it is pretty obvious that Ahmed Qurei lost the power struggle with Yasser Arafat, and that nothing has changed. 8:52:36 AM    comment []  trackback []

Do as we say, not as we do! French Transport Minister Gilles de Robien has been leading a campaign for safer roads, focusing among other things on cracking down on speeding. However, the French car magazine Auto Plus has recently revealed that when he and another minister were travelling in a car convoy, the cars were doing more than 100 kph where the speed limit was 70. The punchline: The ministers were on their way to inaugurate a new speed camera. 5:47:42 AM    comment []  trackback []

Internet threat averted, for now The plan to move control of the Internet from the Icann model that 'rule' it today to the United Nations has been put on hold, for now. The upside of UN control of the Net is that nothing would ever be done. That may also be the downside. 4:43:16 AM    comment []  trackback []

So exactly how 'extremist' are they? Some very small steps toward modernisation and democratisation are being made in Saudi Arabia, but they face furious opposition from hardliners who, we are told, is a minority, but yet a very vocal and powerful one. Now, how backwards are these people? One Islamic Web site, in attacking the book, displayed a drawing of girls in a classroom and declared: "To show this to male students is a problem. ... A boy could remove it at every opportunity he has, kiss it and return it to his desk's drawer." Imagine the horror! Web sites are a major weapon for extremists. A drawing from the new textbook shows a boy and a girl -- identified as siblings -- sitting together in class elicits this remark on one site: "A male student sitting next to a female student during computer class! What kind of serious psychological effect will that have on students." Another commentary says: "What kind of enticement for mixing is this? May God help us." Or his competitor. 3:41:32 AM    comment []  trackback []

Presidential material? A very interesting overview of Gen. Wesley Clark's career in the military, his strengths and weaknesses. 1:46:54 AM    comment []  trackback []

Asexuality revisited Some time back, I wrote about the folks at AVEN's Asexuality board, poking a bit of fun at a thread where people went 'yuck, how disgusting' about various aspects of sex, the smell in particular. Well, now somebody on that board discovered my posting through google and made a thread about it, whining about the lack of understanding (and apparently thinking this was part of Salon magazine, which I hasten to add, it is not!). Apparently, their sense of humour went away along with the... you know. This gave me a brilliant idea, btw. I will make a message board for people who don't like stamp collecting. There we can whine about how pathetic people are who collect stamps, how ugly various stamps are, and how we really don't understand what is the big thing about stamps. 12:36:09 AM    comment []  trackback []

© Copyright 2003 Jan Haugland. Last update: 01.12.2003; 12:12:11.