14. desember 2003

Woman says she is Thurmond's mixed race daughter Essie Mae Washington-Williams, a 78-year old retired schoolteacher living in Los Angeles, says she is the late Sen. Strom Thurmond's mixed-race daughter. Thurmond, who died at 100 some months ago, was a staunch segrationist most of his life. There has for some time been rumours of him having a black, illegitimate daughter from his young years (and I wrote briefly about it some time back). Interestingly, while Thurmond never publicly acknowledged his daughter, which would have been a likely political suicide, she says she was economically taken care of through the years. 10:59:24 PM    comment []  trackback []

Blood for oil revisited Critics of president Bush had a field day with recent accusations that Halliburton subsidiary Kellogg, Brown and Root (KBR) supposedly overcharged the Pentagon for some of its fuel deliveries. As every news report on the story repeats, vice-president Dick Cheney used to be CEO of Halliburton. Bush quickly defused the storm by issuing a statement that if Halliburton had overcharged, they would have to pay it back. Now, I thought the leftist mantra was that Bush went to war with Iraq to steal its oil. Instead, we have an American oil company supposedly overcharging the American taxpayers for delivering oil to Iraq, and selling it to the Iraqi public at heavily subsidised prices. Doesn't look like a theft of Iraqi oil to me. 9:57:27 PM    comment []  trackback []

Mixed reactions to Saddam capture Baghdad is celebrating. Paris is mourning. The leftist bloggers at Metafilter are outright depressed. Leftist conspiracy theory of the day: This happened right now to cover up the Halliburton Pentagon overcharge story. 7:59:32 PM    comment []  trackback []

Explosion near Musharraf's convoy An explosion went off seconds after a motorcade with Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf's passed a bridge in northern Pakistan. Nobody was hurt, but the bridge was damaged. There has been at least two previous attempts on his life. No doubt Musharraf is very near the top of the death list for Islamist extremists. 6:38:33 PM    comment []  trackback []

Powerpoint blamed for Columbia disaster NASA's Columbia Accident Investigation Board has pointed to an unusual secondary cause of the space shuttle disaster, in addition to the foam insulation that was the direct cause of the shuttle breaking up: Microsoft PowerPoint. NASA, the investigative board said, had become so reliant on presenting information as the infamous bulleted slides that it also chose this form of presentation for complex technical data which it was grossly inappropriate for. When NASA engineers assessed possible wing damage during the mission, they presented the findings in a confusing PowerPoint slide -- so crammed with nested bullet points and irregular short forms that it was nearly impossible to untangle. ''It is easy to understand how a senior manager might read this PowerPoint slide and not realize that it addresses a life-threatening situation,'' the board sternly noted. I did for years make a point of omitting PowerPoint whenever I installed Microsoft Office. Later, I generally uninstalled it from whatever work machine I was on. However, as an increasing number of naughty pictures and funnies were passed around in PowerPoint format, I grudgingly reinstalled the slide tool. 5:45:34 PM    comment []  trackback []

Badger badger badger This is some wonderfully insane stuff. Don't ask me. 4:34:34 PM    comment []  trackback []

"Ladies and gentlemen, we got him." US forces has captured Saddam Hussein alive in a hole on a farm near Tikrit; the ex-dictator offering no resistance. US administrator of Iraq Paul Bremer had the pleasant task of announcing his capture, and proclaimed this was a great day in Iraqi history. Even war opponents Jacques Chirac and Gerhard Schröder hailed the capture of one of our time's most brutal and dangerous dictators. Across Iraq, gunfire could be heard as people celebrated. 4:28:41 PM    comment []  trackback []

Afghan summit Forget the EU summit. The important talks going on right now are in Afghanistan, where the government has called a grand council, loya jirga, after 23 years of war.The remains of the Taleban has sworn on destroying it, but President Hamid Karzai insists this is the real thing, and threats from extremists are not going to stop it. 2:48:49 AM    comment []  trackback []

Peru's president fires PM over "Lesbian" allegations Peru's president Alejandro Toledo has demanded the resignation of the country's first-ever female prime minister, Beatriz Merino. The cabinet has only been working for around six months. Merino has been a very popular prime minister, also helping the president who himself is deeply unpopular. However, she has recently been accused of being a lesbian, a grave sin in the deeply religious country, and though denying the accusation this is the stated cause of her resignation. Others speculate that the real reason is that Merino has ambitions towards the presidency. Toledo firing everybody doing a good job is certainly not going to help Peru. 2:37:19 AM    comment []  trackback []

© Copyright 2004 Jan Haugland. Last update: 01.01.2004; 02:46:45.