I am busy reading the 9/11 Commission Report (PDF). I am cyrrently on page 93 of 585 (!) in the report itself, after first having read the much shorter Executive Summary (PDF).
It
is scary and depressive reading, not only because so many people
died on September 11, 2001, but because an entire chain of command
(maybe better described as a collection of missing links) failed
miserably. The people who were caught in a situation they had never
trained for were forced to improvise, which some of them did very well,
and others not so well.
I realise that the timing of the report is such that pundits are
scrambling to find ammunition in the partisan fight. I hope I am wrong,
but I fear that most of the detailed work of the commission will be
treated like an arsenal for a snowball fight. There is, after all, enough blame to go around for almost everybody. The report itself will also undoubtedly be the target of attacks.
I think it is more important to learn lessons, change, adapt and organise for the counter attack.
I have so far resisted the temptation to quote short sound bites. You
really should look at this document. It is well written, informative
and important..
With the Olympics to start next month, it is not reassuring to read about an Athens fire bombing of an Olympic exhibition by suspected anarchists. Greece has
been the favourite entrance point for international terroristm to Europe for decades, in addition to its own domestic problems.
— France pushed the EU to support anti-Israel resolution
Israel had hoped that the European Union would have abstained from the
UN General Assembly resolution demanding the removal of the security
fence, but concentrated efforts by certain countries secured EU's backing
for the one-sided condemnation of Israel.
A mere hour before the vote, EU ambassadors agreed
that their 25 members would abstain, and the Dutch ambassador even
rushed to inform al-Kidwa of this decision. At the last moment,
however, France backed by Sweden blocked a final decision to abstain
and pushed fellow members to support the resolution.
"It was the
French connection that delivered Europeans' support for the
resolution," a Western diplomat who wished to remain anonymous told
Haaretz yesterday. "In behind-the-scene negotiations over the wording
of the resolution, it was sometimes hard to distinguish between the
eagerness of the PLO observer al-Kidwa and that displayed by French
Ambassador [Jean-Marc de la] Sabliere," the diplomat added.
Commentators
in New York said France's position might have been influenced by their
fury over Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's call for French Jews to move to
Israel.
Israel
responded by indicating that it will now be "very difficult" to include
the EU, part of the "quartet" that developed the so-called "road map,"
as a party in the peace process.
Norwegian leftists to buy WaPo ad to tell Bush we don't like him
Back in June,
I wrote about a group of Norwegian leftists starting a campaign to buy
an ad in the Washington Post close to the US presidential election to
tell Americans that most Norwegians do not support the Iraq war. The
site is on TellHim.No,
and "him" is president Bush, who, they believe, live under the
misconception that Norwegians support the Iraq war. They, on the other
hand, live under the misconception that anybody cares.
The story was kind of amusing, and I poked a bit of fun of them, and
said "I wished our wingnuts stayed inside our borders and not do too
much to embarrass the country."
Now a couple of Norway's artists (which most Norwegians haven't
heard about either) are auctioning art pieces to support the campaign
to buy this full page ad (PDF) in the Washington Post.
The campaign need NOK 700,000 (~US$100,000) to buy the ad, of which
140,000 ($20,000) has been collected. They can be happy that their
favourite Kerry is a much better fund raiser than Norwegian socialists.
If these wingnuts stepped back a moment, they would have realised this is not
only an incredibly stupid campaign, it is most likely to be counter
productive. They should think about how most Norwegians would react if
a group of Americans, supported by a political party hostile to Norway
(say, Greenpeace) bought an ad in a Norwegian daily telling us that
Americans didn't like what we were doing (e.g. hunting whales). What if
it also implied, if not suggested, that Americans should vote for or
against a certain candidate in an upciming election. If the ad swayed
anyone, actually registered at all, it would most likely push them in the opposite direction.
Now, if any readers of the Washington Post actually
bothers to read the ad and think it through, it will occur to them that
the Norwegians
who bought this ad were too stupid to understand the above, rather
obvious fact. And if these foreigners are so stupid they are unable to
understand such a basic fact of human psychology, what is the chance of
them being able to offer constructive advice on the war on terror? The
advice? Oh, it says:
Fighting terrorism is too important to be done by waging war.
Cute, eh?
The Norwegian newspaper Aftenposten (which actually used to be
conservative) also interviews Geir Lundestad of the Nobel Institute in
Norway. He says he has "little faith" in such a campaign. However,
Lundestad also states that the upcoming election is of particular
interest to Norwegians, and the vast majority here want Bush to lose.
Norwegian-Americans in the US, on the other hand, are often likely to be
conservative because they are now part of the integrated "establishment".
