24. desember 2003

Dennis Kucinich interview Mike Pence, who used to blog in this neighbourhood, is hanging around Kuro5hin these days, and he has just interviewed democratic presidential hopeful (very hopeful) Dennis Kucinich. Kucinich wants to take the US out of NAFTA, the Free Trade agreement and the WTO, immediately leave the running of Iraq to the UN and withdraw the armed forces, make it harder for businesses to outsource labour, and give the US universal healthcare. And, yeah, he loves open source and wants to decriminalize drugs. Personally I find Kucinich's healthcare and drug ideas rather interesting. He could probably do well running for prime minister in any European country. 8:57:07 PM    comment []  trackback []

Animal rights activists in poison scare A group of Swedish animal rights activists calling themselves Animals' Liberation Front (hmm, wonder who their role models are) have announced that they have poisoned meat packages in nine Stocholm supermarkets to protest Christmas meat-eating. No poisoned meat has actually been found. It's not only cows that have a tendency to insanity these days. 8:42:38 PM    comment []  trackback []

Mad USDA? Are we seeing the start of a scandal here? Press agency UPI says it had futilly tried to get United States Department of Agriculture to document its mad cow testing in the country, before the agency finally announcing a single case of mad cow syndrome The USDA claims to have tested approximately 20,000 cows for the disease in 2002 and 2003, but has been unable to provide any documentation in support of this to UPI, which first requested the information in July. In addition, former USDA veterinarians tell UPI they have long suspected the disease was in U.S herds and there are probably additional infected animals. USDA Secretary Ann M. Veneman announced late Tuesday during a hastily scheduled news briefing that a cow slaughtered Dec. 9 on a farm in Mabton, Wash., had tested positive for mad cow disease. The farm has been quarantined but the meat from the animal may have already passed into the human food supply. At least one veterinarian invokes tales of doom and gloom: An outbreak of mad cow disease in the United States has the potential to dwarf the situation in the United Kingdom because the American beef industry is far larger and U.S. beef is exported to countries all over the globe. "We're talking about billions of people" around the world who potentially have been exposed to U.S. beef, Lester Friedlander, a former USDA veterinarian who has been insisting mad cow is present in American herds for years, told UPI. The fear is that humans can get an always-fatal disease known as Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease by eating beef infected with mad cow syndrome (BSE; bovine spongiform encephalopathy). In the meantime, countries are imposing beef import bans from the US (which sometimes conveniently doubles as trade protection), and beef-related stocks are falling. 6:46:41 PM    comment []  trackback []

The revenge of the geeks An extremely typical Wired article, and you can take that both ways: How the Internet invented Howard Dean. Remember back when the EFF and other cyberpunks wanted to use the power of the Net to reverse engineer the government in Washington DC? That didn't go very well either. The trick is to find out who has the push, and who has the pull, before it's too late. 8:30:27 AM    comment []  trackback []

Weapons of mass distraction On reflection, we can be very happy that Colonel Moammar Gaddafi has volunteered to give up his weapons of mass destruction. If he should have chosen to hide them among his wardrobe, there is no chance in hell anyone could ever find them. 6:59:17 AM    comment []  trackback []

Better late than never New York has just pardoned comedian Lenny Bruce for using obscene words on the scene, 37 years after his death from an overdose. 5:25:51 AM    comment []  trackback []

Mad cow disease enters the US One cow has tested positive for mad cow disease (BSE) in Washington state, being the first case of the devastating cattle disease in the US. Within hours, a number countries had instituted import bans on US beef. The disease almost decimated British livestock and beef industry in the 90s, and had serious consequences way beyond those farms directly affected. Remember the Brits have a vast inventory of mad cow jokes they told each other over several years, and that Americans can now start importing. This may be death to many farms and McDonald's, but yet another boost for stand up comics everywhere. 4:48:14 AM    comment []  trackback []

Saddam and Dollar This Stratfor analysis argues that the capture of Saddam is important on many levels, but mostly because it shows that the militants are unable to protect their leader. And why? Because they are about to run out of money. The Baath system was a cleptocracy, and those who are in on it are there because of money. The coalition forces simply have more money, and are thus able to buy the loyalties of enough people to make many former regime allies likely to switch loyalties. This realisation made it possible for coalition forces and intelligence services to apprehend Saddam Hussein, and also to get a number of other victories against the insurgents. The attempts by insurgents to rob banks and money transports is to Stratfor evidence that the insurgents are out of cash, and willing to fight even desperate battles for it. This Jane's analysis takes a somewhat different perspective. It demonstrates that many of the insurgents are armed thugs and criminals. When you think about it, these perspectives are only two sides of the same reality. At any rate, money is much less important to the Islamist terrorists, and this strategy will not work against them. On the other hand, the jihadists are foreigners, and will stick out among Iraqers. The war for Iraq may well have entered a totally new phase. 3:19:49 AM    comment []  trackback []

Most unlikely Christmas picture ever The above is actually a Christmas picture from Snippen farm in eastern Norway. No, ostriches are not native to Norway. PS: The white part of Xmas is currently raining away right now. Oh well. 1:26:26 AM    comment []  trackback []

© Copyright 2004 Jan Haugland. Last update: 01.01.2004; 02:47:06.