19. mars 2004

Mistranslation of terror threat caused concern in Norway The Abu Hafs al-Masri brigades, the fax- and email-based terrorist organisation that takes responsibility for everything bad in al-Qaeda's name, caused a bit of panic among Norwegians when it appeared that its latest tirade warned against new terror attacks in, among other places, Oslo. But the terrorists in this case were journalists, not al-Qaeda. Somehow Reuters had translated a referece to "Al Saloul" to Oslo. In reality, this is a rather convoluted reference to the Saudis. The name refers to the original family guarding the Kaaba in Mekka. After a bit of work, the Norwegian security police (PST) had looked through the original Arab text, and confirmed that the danger of terror attacks to Norway should remain "low." (From a Norwegian article in VG) However, in May last year, al-Qaeda's Ayman Al Zawahri did single out Norway for attacks, causing panicked Norwegian officials and politicians to assume it must have been a mistake somewhere. That reaction does not inspire confidence for what will happen if the worst happens. 10:40:45 PM    comment []  trackback []

Couple charged with battery after watching Gibson's Passion Sean and Melissa Davidson, a couple from Georgia in the USA, spent a night in a jail cell after a theological debate escalated into a fistfight. They had just seen Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ, when they started discussing how many gods fit on the head of a dogma. The problem, in a nutshell, was that Sean left the cinema believing that the Father referred to in the Holy Trinity was a human being, whereas his wife interpreted this in more symbolic terms. Dad a human being? Good grief. Calvin would have burned him on a stake. At home things turned ugly. Police reports claim that Melissa suffered injuries to her face and arms, while Sean suffered scissor stabs to his hand and had his shirt torn off. He is alleged to have also punched a hole in the living room wall. The Davidsons were released on $1,000 bail and appear to have ultimately agreed to disagree and make peace with one another. This, one suspects, is what Jesus would have wanted all along. I am not entirely convinced about that. Remember what Jesus said: Matthew 10:34 "Do not suppose that I have come to bring peace to the earth. I did not come to bring peace, but a sword." And a bit of spousal battery, apparently. 8:09:59 PM    comment []  trackback []

Pentagon bypasses Bush's stem-cell ban A team at Lund University in Sweden are conducting embryonic stem-cell research related to Parkinson's disease. Perhaps surprisingly, the US Pentagon funds the research with $240,000. President Bush has banned federal funding of similar research in the USA. Is this what we should call religious outsourcing? Pentagon thinks this study can be important for treating victims of some chemical weapons. Bush apparently thinks it is murder. Oh well, Pentagon has the real experise on that topic, after all. 5:47:46 PM    comment []  trackback []

Porno clips Heh. 4:05:47 PM    comment []  trackback []

The ones that got away, and what they did I referred to a story by Newsweek's Rod Nordland below. I decided to search for more of his articles, and found an interesting one from August 2002, about how the al-Qaeda leadership got away when Afghanistan fell. It includes this profound prediction: But it does make a difference. Some European and Arab intelligence experts believe, in fact, that Al Qaeda has mutated into a form that is no less deadly and even more difficult to combat. “We are confronted with cells that are all over the place, developing in a very horizontal structure without any evident big center of coordination,” a top European counterterrorist investigator told NEWSWEEK. “Our operational evaluation today is that the threat is a lot greater than it was in December. That is to say, the worst is ahead of us, not behind us.” Sadly correct. The new strain of al-Qaeda is decentralised, as we could see when an affiliated group (assumably) could strike without forwarning through the electronic "chatter" western intelligence keeps an eye on. This also means that even if the group should be totally destroyed in the borderlands between Afghanistan and Pakistan, we'll still face their cells worldwide. 12:36:23 PM    comment []  trackback []

Phew! That was close We've just had a very close encounter with a "small" asteroid.The asteroid came within 26,500 miles  (~42 600 km) or 3.4 Earth diameters from Earth, and was actually visible on binoculars. The body is only 100 feet (~30 m) across. Even that hurts pretty badly if it falls into your neighbourhood. 3:20:15 AM    comment []  trackback []

The "Aznar lied" meme as defence for Spanish appeasement Gabriel Gonzalez, guest blogger at Winds of Change, is taking a serious look at the popular European defense "Aznar lied" against the serious charge that Spain gave in to terror when it voted the socialists into power. Read it! What is it with leftists and the word "lie"? You get this picture of wild-eyed frothing at mouth maniacs screaming the word "lies! lies! lies!" at the top of their lungs, to avoid anything resembling a calm debate of the facts. Bush lied, Blair lied, Aznar lied. There is no nuance, no debate, honest error does not exist, there is merely the shoting of political slogans by mindless thugs. Behold: old Europe's old left. And the facts are, sadly, that al-Qaeda attacked just before the Spanish election with the express purpose of helping the socialists into power, knowing they would remove Spain from the US-lead coalition against terrorism. What they predicted indeed happened. The terrorists will surely celebrate this as a victory, and as evidence that Europeans are disgraced, cowardly and weak. It will also greatly encourage them to attack other European countries. Their morale is boosted, our morale is hurt. No doubt, Aznar handled the situation badly. That will be a footnote in the history books. The body text will say that when terrorists attacked, Spain broke ranks with its allies and fled the battlefield. The sad fact is that even as anti-Americanism has a long history in Europe, for all its plots the Soviet Union never really succeeded in splitting western Europe away from the US. Al-Qaeda managed to split western Europe very early in the war on terror. PS: Newsweek's Rod Nordland agrees that even as Aznar's Popular Party scored an own goal that had much to do with the result, that doesn't change the sad outcome of the battle: Spanish voters this week handed Al Qaeda its greatest victory yet in the war on terror.  For the first time, it managed to topple an enemy's government, and change a major Western country's foreign policy. Thanks to this disaster, everybody in Europe is in much greater danger now. What greater way to encourage terrorists than confirming to them that it works? PS 2: A statement signed by Abu-Hafs Al-Masri/al-Qaida Brigades, who first took responsibility for the Madrid bombings, praises the Spanish withdrawal and promises a truce to the European weasel coalition: "We have let the Spanish people choose between war and peace," said the statement received by the London-based newspaper Al-Quds Al-Arabi. "They chose peace by electing the party which opposed the alliance with America in its war against Islam," said the text signed by Abu-Hafs Al-Masri/al-Qaida Brigades. [...] "That's why the leadership has decided to halt all operations on Spanish territory against civilian targets until we know the direction taken by the new government which has promised to withdraw the Spanish army from Iraq, and that we are sure of the government's non-interference in Muslim affairs," it said. "So we call on all the brigades which are on European territory to halt these operations." As I have noted earlier, while there is little doubt about where this dubious  group's loyalties are, it is very unclear what relationship it has to the Al-Qaeda leadership, if any. But whoever is behind these Islamofascist messages, they have indeed gotten the message of surrender from the Spanish people and its new leader Zapatero. PS 3: Another key US ally, Poland's President Aleksander Kwasniewski, has stated that he feels his country were "mislead" over WMDs in Iraq, but he feels it was the right choice to go to war and that it he had no plans to withdraw Polish forces. It is worth noting that the Spanish forces in Iraq are under Poland's command. Btw, guess which part of Kwasniewski's statement is given the greatest emphasis in the leftist press in this country! Not this one: "Iraq today, without Saddam Hussein, is a much better place than Iraq with Saddam Hussein," the Polish president said. That is the simple truth that the Euroleft is unable to understand. 1:01:11 AM    comment []  trackback []

© Copyright 2004 Jan Haugland. Last update: 01.04.2004; 02:27:00.