16. desember 2003

Googled for PowerPoint By cosmic coincidence, my blog comes up prominently when somebody Googles for "situation in iraq blamed on powerpoint" (yes, go figure). You may remember that the Columbia disaster was partly blamed on Microsoft PowePoint. Since other blog entries on the same day mentioned the situation in Iraq, Google had them combined. I am quite sure that PowerPoint can take no credit for the capture of Saddam Hussein. It may have something to do with that presentation Bremer made afterwards, but I doubt it. 8:28:45 PM    comment []  trackback []

Spiritual guidance from the Vatican A leading Roman Catholic cardinal, who vocally opposed the Iraq war, has used the opportunity to slam the US forces for how they treated Saddam Hussein. Cardinal Renato Martino said he had felt pity watching video of "this man destroyed, [the military] looking at his teeth as if he were a beast". [...] "Seeing him like this, a man in his tragedy, despite all the heavy blame he bears, I had a sense of compassion for him," Save all the compassion you have for his victims, Cardinal. 6:32:05 PM    comment []  trackback []

Musharraf plot an "inside job" There is a frantic hunt for the plotters of an assassination attempt that narrowly failed to blow up the Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf's motorcade. The timing of the bomb, reportedly 800 to 1000 lbs of high explosives, shows it was certainly an inside job by people in the security or intelligence, and it's certainly not the first one. The problem is that Pakistan has been using very shady individuals for a long time for its own purposes. First in Kashmir, where it has been useful for Pakistan to leave the dirty work to religious extremists who are willing to kill indiscriminately and die themselves for its purposes. Then, in a close cooperation with the Taliban when Pakistan thought it would be in its interest to get its unruly neighbour controlled by law and order extremists instead of a lengthy civil war. The intelligence communities have used the extremists, sure, but they have also at the same time been used by them, and the extremist groups have infiltrated and recruited in the security and intelligence networks while they have been plotting their long term plans. And now, when Pakistan after 9/11 have changed direction, the country find its security forces unreliable and infiltrated by the very enemies of civilisation, groups that owe allegience to no national state. In the war on terror, Pakistan is a key state, and maybe too much rests on one man. There are lessons to be learned from this for everybody, sure, but Musharraf is probably too busy cleaning up Pakinstan's armed forces and secret services to ponder the lesson. General Musharraf is very near the top of the death list for the world's most dangerous terrorist organisation, and.there is a race against time to prevent the next bomb from being better timed. 7:53:46 AM    comment []  trackback []

Health care? A former nurse has said he has killed 30 to 40 patients over 16 years, allegedly to relieve their suffering. And there was more than enough warning signs, if authorities and employers had cared. 4:56:26 AM    comment []  trackback []

You should have thought of that earlier ""Why didn't you fight?" one Governing Council member asked Hussein as their meeting ended. Hussein gestured toward the U.S. soldiers guarding him and asked his own question: "Would you fight them?"" (Jim Hoagland in the Washington Post)  2:27:54 AM    comment []  trackback []

The left: Saddam Hussein may be bad, but Haliburton is worse! This columnist at AlterNet (the alternate reality news source) is not making any attempts to hide his frustration with the arrest of Saddam Hussein, and belittles it. Just a day or two earlier, Halliburton, the company whose former leader just happens to be Vice President Cheney and which had the good fortune to get a fat billion-dollar no-bid Iraq reconstruction contract, was being excoriated by the Pentagon for some $60 million worth of inflated invoices. The malodorous stench of corruption was beginning to seep out of the hermetically sealed Bush bubble, and things were beginning to look a bit bleak for the administration on the homeland propaganda front. There would be tough questions asked, inquiries launched, and baying for blood from a newly emboldened field of Democratic contenders for Bush's throne. Assistance came from that most unlikely of sources, Saddam Hussein; replete with appropriately bedraggled appearance and whipped-cur onscreen manner, just in time to deflect all eyes from a good hard look at the character of the man serving as their Commander In Chief.  Yes, clearly, getting to the bottom of whether a few million dollars were overcharged by Haliburton is more important than getting a murderer of hundreds of thousands brought to justice. It is all just a sham for Haliburton to continue selling gasoline and catering services at inflated prices. This surely is on the agenda for the next meeting at the Trilateral commission, or the Illuminati. Leftists again display an amazing lack of a sense of proportions. Another leftist whine, directed at fellow leftists who actually cheer the capture of a genocidal tyrant over at the Democratic Underground, again demonstrating a total lack of an ethical compass: There really do seem to be a lot of us here who are genuinely happy that Saddam is captured. This suprises me. I'm not happy they captured him. That's not to say that I'm sad. I just think today's news doesn't stir any emotion in me at all. Saddam was never a threat to me. He never did anything to me personally. I doubt he ever did anything to you. This echoes the words Mark at Fried Green quotes from one Steve Raker ("a Minority View"): An evil, tired and pointless old man is dragged out of a dirt hole.  Hip, hip hooray.  I cannot rejoice at this news as I wish I could.  Bush and his team, already drunk with power, are given more.  They backslap and highfive and plot anew, with no checks, no balances to impede them.  I care about THIS country and not so much about Iraq. This explains the radical left's support for Lenin, Stalin, Pol Pot and Mao. These dictators only killed some foreigners; never did anything to them. And, heck, Saddam's moustache invites such leftist nostalgia! And here I thought the left at least pretended to be moral and internationalist. Fake sympathy for suffering people in the third world is only a weapon to be used to beat up political opponents back home. Let's remember this the next time we hear radical leftists whine about innocent civilians killed in the Iraqi war: they don't really care. Dead Iraqi babies are just weapons to be hurled at Bush or Blair, not anyone they would bother to help. Anyone actually doing something to put an end to the slaughter of babies and adults ailke, is a "war criminal." 12:58:23 AM    comment []  trackback []

Arab street in mourning, local anti-war regrouping With the obvious exception of Iraqis and Kuwaitis, Arabs are absolutely not happy that Saddam Hussein has been captured. Mustafa Bakri, the pro-Saddam editor in chief of the independent Egyptian weekly Al-Osbou, said on the television: "It's a black day in the history of the Arabs. It's a humiliation. "It's Bush, Blair, Berlusconi, Aznar and Sharon who should be put on trial," said Bakri, who organized several solidarity trips from Cairo to Baghdad before US troops invaded in March. The European left seems to agree, but they don't dare say it that honestly. The capture of Saddam was a shock for leftists, and today all they can do is haggle about where he should be tried (since the US says Iraq, they say the UN) and mumble about his display on TV being a violation of the Geneva convention. However, if the Norwegian NRK radio is any guide to future leftist argument, we will expect growing accusations that the arrest was staged, or that Saddam was drugged (top story in Nettavisen now, referring to the excellent source al-Quds!) or gassed. Perhaps most importantly, the leftists here are predicting that the arrest of Saddam will lead to more resistance to the coalition, as there is no longer a danger that militants will be associated with the Saddam regime, so now the real Iraqi nationalist patriots will come forward and start shooting at the US forces. Yes, that is the state of Norwegian intellectuals and journalists these days. 12:01:39 AM    comment []  trackback []

© Copyright 2004 Jan Haugland. Last update: 01.01.2004; 02:46:50.