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13. september 2004
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Iraq hostage taking
Top Islamic clerics are more than reluctant to issue a fatwa against taking civilian hostages and other terrorist activities in Iraq.
Also:
Still, I doubt that the motives of the anonymous kidnappers in this case are political. The kidnappers would probably say they are but it looks, until now, that they are mainly after ransom, as in some previous cases. It is also probable that the money might be used to finance future terrorist activities or that it may not. Perhaps all the various Islamic groups have just found it more profitable and worthwhile to kidnap foreigners for ransom, this could explain why more and more civilians that have nothing to do with the conflict in Iraq are being targeted.
Columbia being a case in point.
11:02:25 PM 
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US crime still dropping
Europeans still consider the United States a country of wild crime rates. That is increasingly untrue. New statistics reveal the lowest overall crime rate since 1973.
The study was the latest contribution to a decade-long trend in which violent crime as measured by victim surveys has fallen by 55 percent and property crime by 49 percent. That has included a 14 percent drop in violent crime from 2000-2001 to 2002-2003.
"The rates are the lowest experienced in the last 30 years," Justice Department statistician Shannan Catalona said in the report. "Crime rates have stabilized."
Since this report is based on statements from crime victims, murder is not included.
6:57:25 PM
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Case closed on CBS memo fraud
The definite technical analysis of the CBS guard memos by Joseph M. Newcomer, a pioneer of electronic typesetting: The Bush Guard memos are forgeries.
There has been a lot of activity on the Internet recently concerning the forged CBS documents. I do not even dignify this statement with the traditional weasel-word “alleged”, because it takes approximately 30 seconds for anyone who is knowledgeable in the history of electronic document production to recognize this whole collection is certainly a forgery, and approximately five minutes to prove to anyone technically competent that the documents are a forgery. I was able to replicate two of the documents within a few minutes.
The article is highly technical, but very well written and really should be the final word on the technical issues.
In fact, he also corrects a misunderstanding that I also propagated earlier. The 'kerning' we see in Microsoft Word (or any program that uses TrueType), is more properly described as pseudo-kerning, which gives the illusion of proper pair kerning via a computionally less expensive method. Yes, this is technical bitfiddling, but it is actually quite important. The CBS guard memos contains exactly the same negative horizontal offset on the letter "j" as what we find in the Times New Roman TrueType font, which is incidentally covered by an Apple Computer patent that didn't exist before 1989 (see third email down).
There is a danger of beating a dead horse here, but there is not a chance in hell that any typewriter in 1972 could do something like that. Those who still defend the guard memos that CBS pushed are either incompetent or lying.
Links via PowerLine.
PS. Those who want to prove this wrong, should be able to produce quite exact copies of the memos in question on office equipment that would be readily available in 1972. If you do this, you can collect $37,900.
3:44:53 PM
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Who is controlling the terrorist attacks in Iraq?
Ali at Iraq the Model is asking a very good question: How come when Moqtada al-Sadr's revolt was looking successful, the terrorist attacks from the Islamist-Baathist alliance stopped almost completely, only to resume when al-Sadr's effort came to nothing? Ali says this has happened twice now, and that is hardly a coincidence. Besides, where is Zarqawi?
Doesn't this look awfully coordinated?
When Sadr joined the ‘resistance’ it gained an Iraqi ‘face’ in the eyes of some Iraqis and many Arabs and westerns, thus it was unwise to smear this image with suicide attacks that have only resulted in Iraqis getting more united but not against the American, it made them more united against terrorism. The minds behind the “resistance” decided that suicide attacks should stop, and they only resumed when Sadr went silent and was not doing his job, simply because they had no other option. The march towards democracy should be stopped and Iraq must be destroyed; at the hands of Iraqis if possible but if not then by any means.
It happened twice till now. When Sadr revolt suicide attacks stop and when Sadr stops suicide attacks resume. The only two suicide attacks that were carried during this period was soon after a peace agreement was reached and when clashes broke up again they stopped. I think that when the Mehdi militia issue will be settled, we will witness again another horrible series of suicide attacks. This whole theory depends on assuming that the relation between the “resistance” and its supporters is much stronger than it looks. The people who support the “resistance” finance it and thus can dictate to a considerable extent its strategy.
He also predicts the terrorists in Iraq will concentrate on trying to increase the death toll of American forces in Iraq in an attempt to hurt Bush politically.
At any rate, there is more to the insurgency in Iraq than meets the eye. There is a level of coordination going on, which is not surprising considering that the Arab governments, the Iranians and al-Qaeda has a common interest in making sure Iraqi democracy fails.
3:20:16 PM
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© Copyright 2004 Jan Haugland.
Last update: 01.10.2004; 07:24:46.
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