1. januar 2004

Kurt is world idol Kurt Nilsen from Bergen, Norway, actually won the World Idol competition. Message to Radio DJs: This is not a permission to play "She's so High" ever again! 11:29:39 PM    comment []  trackback []

Musharraf "voted" president Pakistan's national assembly and four regional ones have voted Pervez Musharraf head of state for a total of five years. Some creative constitutional maneuvering has allowed the army general who took power in a coup to become the legal president. A surprise deal with Islamist parties means they abstained, allowing the vote to pass near-unanimously, but with accusations of fraud from abstaining parliamentaries. There is hope that a standoff between the parliament and Musharraf is now ended. So now western countries who rely on Musharraf in the war against terror can call him a democratically elected leader, almost without cringing. But we don't have a choice, do we? In Iraq, democracy was worth a massive war and billions of dollars. In Pakistan, we look the other way and a military dictator becomes our closest ally. And Taiwan better not dare to declare themselves a sovereign democratic nations, to not offend our friends the murderous thugs in China. True idealists don't last long in this world. 11:15:47 AM    comment []  trackback []

Scandinavian Airlines refuses armed guards on planes Scandinavian Airlines objects strongly to the US demand for foreign flights to the US carrying armed sky marshals, and this refusal is supported by both the Norwegian and the Swedish governments. An SAS spokeswoman in Oslo told Norwegian Broadcasting (NRK) Tuesday morning that the presence of armed guards simply runs counter to Scandinavian culture. In Norway, not even the police are armed, and they must receive special permission to carry weapons if they deem circumstances call for it. It is understood, of course, that al-Qaeda will respect "Scandinavial culture" and only carry batons when performing terrorist acts. Contrary to this ill-thought objection, this idea is perfectly in accordance with the special Norwegian rules for arming police officers. In special circumstances, armed police is called for. A terror threat to any Norwegian target would be such a special circumstance. Sweden has armed police ordinarily, so will have to find another excuse. In fact, they have reached an agreement with the US authorites. It means the US will demand the flight cancelled. Message home: If we are coming across as a more naive target than the French, we are too naive a target! 8:27:36 AM    comment []  trackback []

New years picture Massive fireworks over ancient Acropolis in Athens. The famous Spanish pyrotechnician Alberto Navarro had been given the task of creating the fireworks, and apparently he did a great job. 7:15:26 AM    comment []  trackback []

Greatest Arab: Bin Laden vs Saddam Hussein? The BBC started it with the 'Greatest Briton' (Churchill or Newton, depending who were polled) poll, the Germans copied it to find the greatest German (Konrad Adenauer), so why not have a poll for the greatest Arab of all times? Well, for obvious reasons Mohammad and other early religious leaders were excluded from the start, but unlike the Germans who excluded nazi criminals from the poll, quite a few unsavatory characters are (still) in it, and are receiving many votes. The Dubai-based Middle East Broadcasting Centre is still in the nomination process, and no figures are coming out, but it does confirm that both Saddam Hussein (picture) and Osama Bin Laden are receiving votes. The broadcaster admits it would be embarrassing if these should receive a large amount of support, but it has no plans to exclude them. Other nominations include Saladin, famous for having liberated Jerusalem from the Crusaders; Palestinian president Yasser Arafat; Saudi King Abdul Aziz al Saud, and… legendary actor Omar Sharif. Time will tell if the so-called "Arab street" has more sense than, say, French journalists. 5:24:55 AM    comment []  trackback []

French newspaper fires critical journalist Belgian journalist Alain Hertoghe has written a scathing criticism of the French press and its biased and flawed reporting from the Iraq war. His book La Guerre à Outrances (The War of Outrages) analysed the reporting of five leading newspapers, the "independent" Le Monde, the conservative Le Figaro, the left Libération, the regional Ouest-France and his own employer La Croix, and argues that they gave such a misleading view that the readers must have been astonished at the total and sudden success of the coalition army. "Readers can't understand why the Americans won the war," Hertoghe said in a telephone interview. "The French press wasn't neutral." The book, published in October, claims that French reporters were more patriotic than journalistic, and that what they wrote amounted to disinformation. The book has received rave reviews in his native Belgium, but a "deafening silence" in France. And, quite summarily, La Croix sacked Hertoghe for "loss of confidence" because, among other things, he "damaged" the newspaper's "reputation." Such a book could just as well have been written in Norway, if a single journalist could be found with backbone to stand up to the leftist clan, that is. Norwegian newsmedia were still repeating claims from the Iraqi information minister al-Sahaf as if he was a credible source up to the actual capture of Baghdad, when they like everybody else turned quickly around and started telling jokes about him. 3:17:38 AM    comment []  trackback []

Stroke of luck When Dorothy Fletcher, a 67-year-old grandmother from Liverpool, England, first got a heart attack on a flight to Florida, she could not have been more lucky with her choice of fellow passengers.When the stweardess asked the traditional questions "is there a doctror on the plane", not one but 15 cardiologists stood up and rushed over to help the woman. The doctors were all on their way to a heart conference in Orlando. Mrs Fletcher recovered fine. 2:45:09 AM    comment []  trackback []

© Copyright 2004 Jan Haugland. Last update: 01.02.2004; 11:31:55.