It is often forgotten that there are 1.2 million Arab citizens of Israel, making up around 20% of the population. When they are mentioned, it is often to point out that this is the only group of Arabs in the Middle East who enjoy democratic and civil rights, and, conversely, that these Arabs are discriminated against in the Jewish state. Both is true.
How can Israel resolve its dilemma of being a Jewish state and a democracy who should protect the rights of its non-Jewish citizens? Read this very interesting article by Peter Berkowitz.
Brazil's President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva has refused IAEA inspectors access to a uranium enrichment plant outside Rio de Janeiro. Few fear that Brazil is about to develop nuclear weapons, and Brazil says the decision is about protecting its propriatery information. However, if the US and the IAEA allows Brazil to get away with this, it will seriously undermine efforts to make North Korea and Iran comply with non-proliferation regulations.
Brazil too? Sheesh. I honestly didn't see that one coming.
A native Swedish woman reportedly had a link to al-Qaeda. Her name was found on an airplane ticket in a house used by Bin Laden in Jalalabad in Afghanistan.
The woman is born and raised in northern Sweden, and she was a punkette in her youth. Some years later, she shocked her family and close friends by converting to Islam, and she started to dress according to strict Muslim rules.
Good grief. What is it with these people who convert to islamofascism?
What really scares me is that the world's most incompetent security police, Swedish Säpo, is responsible for investigating these potential terrorists, who also have links to other Nordic countries.
There is no end in sight for the number of new ways to explore the blogosphere, and the newest one is Kinja. It provides a very nice digest format of selected (selected how?) blogs, giving you some sort of overview of what is going on.
Well, it's added to my toolbox. I liked it, but I have no idea how much I will use it.
No longer satisfied with the primitive rankings page, I have added a Sitemeter counter to my blog. Somewhat surprisingly, it appears to work even in the ("advanced") jscript version.
A long time ago, I tried a competitor, but found that the Radio Userland software butchered the jscript unless I placed the image on the very top of the page, which I found unacceptable.
At any rate, I hope I like what I find out. So far, I will only find out how many read my front page and more recent pages, as there is no counter on 99%+ of my blog pages.
Spain: Terrorists blew up themselves and killed policeman
One policeman was killed and eleven injured when three terrorists blew themselves up as police attempted to enter a building where the suspects resided. Police is investigating whether a fourth suspect escaped. The explosion happened in a building south of Madrid.
The police were searching for suspects related to the Madrid train bombing.
It is scary to see that Spain was virtually infected with nests of terrorists, just waiting to strike and cause mayhem. Are there such cells all over Europe, just waiting to strike?
