Mailboxes around the world was recently deluged in German language spam with a political message. The spam mails was the borderline racist message so popular for right-wing/populist parties across Europe. The spam used so-called Zombies, PCs taken over by a virus to relay spam and make it almost impossible to stop.
Hardly anything new, but the idea of political spam scares most mail users. Commercial mail can usually be traced to somebody who are trying to sell you something. But there may be no return address for political spam.
The hope is that serious candidates will not be associated with this scourge. Hardly a comfort, of course, as there are enough extremists who don't care who they offend.
Danish ex-UN worker Michael Soussan has testified about the moral relativism of his former collegues, their acceptance of Saddam's cruelty, and how they turned a blind eye to the corruption in the oil for food palaces programme.
The UN turned a blind eye to signs that Saddam was bribing cronies at home and abroad with black market oil vouchers, and was skimming billions from funds meant for food and medicine, demanding secret, 10 per cent "kickbacks" on humanitarian contracts.
The UN recently claimed it "learned of the 10 per cent kickback scheme only after the end of major combat operations" in 2003.
A lie, said Mr Soussan, recalling the hapless Swedish company that called in 2000, seeking UN help after being asked to pay kickbacks. The Swedes' plea was quickly lost in red tape and inter-office turf wars. After a "Kafka-esque" flurry of internal memos, the Swedes were told to complain to their own government.
It did not help that, inside the Security Council, France, Russia and China openly opposed sanctions, threatening doom for any UN official tempted to blow the whistle on Saddam's cheating.
"Most high level UN employees need to be on good terms with key countries in the Security Council if they want to have a career."
Now top UN officials are under investigation. Mr Soussan hopes the shock will force a major debate on how to deal with rogue regimes.
"The oil-for-food programme was a deal with the devil. The problem is, that we didn't act as if this was the devil, we acted as if this was a legitimate regime," he said.
If such major questions have to wait, a little more transparency would help, for starters.
"If the UN had just stood up once, held a high-level press conference, and said, 'We think the Iraqi government is cheating its people', then the UN would not be in the mess it is now," he said. "It would then be an accuser, rather than the accused."
The environment that created UNSCAM.
PS: I am totally unsurprised that Roger L. Simon also found this article.
If you only read one more article about Ronald Reagan in your life, and at this time you may feel like even that is too much, I suggest it be Lech Walesa's words remembering Reagan.
Poles fought for their freedom for so many years that they hold in special esteem those who backed them in their struggle. Support was the test of friendship. President Reagan was such a friend. His policy of aiding democratic movements in Central and Eastern Europe in the dark days of the Cold War meant a lot to us. We knew he believed in a few simple principles such as human rights, democracy and civil society. He was someone who was convinced that the citizen is not for the state, but vice-versa, and that freedom is an innate right.
While many debate the issue, Lech Walesa is not in doubt that Reagan was the man who won the cold war, along with "John Paul II, Margaret Thatcher and even Mikhail Gorbachev."
It is interesting to note this story about how Solidarity used a poster for an American western movie, Gary Cooper's legendary High Noon, against the communists in the 1989 elections in Poland:
It was a simple but effective gimmick that, at the time, was misunderstood by the Communists. They, in fact, tried to ridicule the freedom movement in Poland as an invention of the "Wild" West, especially the U.S.
But the poster had the opposite impact: Cowboys in Western clothes had become a powerful symbol for Poles. Cowboys fight for justice, fight against evil, and fight for freedom, both physical and spiritual. Solidarity trounced the Communists in that election, paving the way for a democratic government in Poland.
In Europe, the word "cowboy" is frequently used about Americans generally and presidents like Reagan and Bush specifically, and it is always intended as an insult. Obviously today's leftist-dominated Europe sympathises more closely with Poland's old communists than with the democratic movement Solidarity.
Extremist Shiite cleric Moqtada Sadr has made a conciliatory sermon in Kufa, urging his followers to stop attacking Iraqi security forces.
In a sermon read out by his spokesman, Mr Sadr called upon the interim government to work to end the occupation according to a timetable set by Iraqi officials, reported a correspondent for Voice of Mujahidin radio present at the sermon.
Mr Sadr added that the formation of the government was a good opportunity to bury past differences and "forge ahead toward the building of a unified Iraq".
The sermon in general was conciliatory, the BBC's David Bamford says.
At the same time, however, his followers clashed with hundeds of supporters of the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq (Sciri), described as a "pro-US" fraction, where fists and missiles caused some injuries.
I suspect the serious beating given to Sadr's militia by coalition forces has been a more important reason for his reconciliatory tone than the forming of the interim government. But the latter provides him a good excuse.
Citizen Smash visits an anti-war rally with moch banners, and pokes fun at them.
He also gives a bit of background information about International A.N.S.W.E.R., the organising left-wing extremists:
The man who started it all was Ramsey Clark. Clark served as the US Attorney General under Lyndon B. Johnson, but has more recently made a name for himself by representing such upstanding world citizens as Liberia's Charles Taylor, Serbia's Radovan Karadzic, and Iraq's Saddam Hussein.
You read that correctly: the founder and driving force behind International A.N.S.W.E.R. is Saddam's lawyer.
There is of course much more.
If this information was more widely available, would a man like Danny Glover support them? I hope not.
