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21. februar 2005
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Sitting down to write another posting, it is sobering to see the threats faced by fellow bloggers in Iran:
Bloggers Arash Sigarchi and Mojtaba Saminejad are both currently in prison in Iran.
Mr Sigarchi has been in detention since 17 January while Mr Saminejad was first detained in November.
"Freedom of expression is really at stake at the moment," says Julien Pain, who runs the Internet Freedom Desk at the Paris based group Reporters without Borders.
"The Iranian authorities have been clamping down on regular media for a long time, but it's only in the last six months that they're harshly attacking cyber-dissidents and webloggers. It's really a serious situation."
It's important that the Mullahs don't get away with doing this in secret.
Check out Iranian.ws for more on the Iranian blogosphere.
10:32:25 PM 
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Highlight of press conference with President Bush and President Chirac in Belgium. A question from the press:
And to you, President Bush, may I ask the following question: If, indeed, relations have improved, if certainly they are better between France and the United States, are they good enough as yet for that to warrant an invitation to President Chirac to go to the United States, or even to your ranch?
PRESIDENT BUSH: I'm looking for a good cowboy.
10:19:26 PM
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Lindsay Allen, of the US Agricultural Research Service, is no friend of vegans (vegetarians who also refuse dairy products and everything else from animals):
Professor Allen said: "There have been sufficient studies clearly showing that when women avoid all animal foods, their babies are born small, they grow very slowly and they are developmentally retarded, possibly permanently."
"If you're talking about feeding young children, pregnant women and lactating women, I would go as far as to say it is unethical to withhold these foods [animal source foods] during that period of life."
She pointed to research from Africa demonstrating that meat enhanced health and intelligence in children:
The changes seen in the children given the meat, and to a lesser extent the milk or oil, were dramatic.
These children grew more and performed better on problem-solving and intelligence tests than any of the other children at the end of the two years.
They also became more active, talkative and playful at school.
Just to emphasise the point about intelligence, here is the attempted rebuttal from the British vegans:
Kostana Azmi, the chief executive officer, said: "The vegan diet can provide you with more energy, nutrition, and is bursting with goodness."
6:10:45 PM
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Hugo Chavez appears to have taken lessons from collegue Kim Jong-Il on how to get international attention:
Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez has said he believes the US government is planning to assassinate him.
"If they kill me, the name of the person responsible is [President] George Bush," Mr Chavez said. [...]
"If, by the hand of the devil, those perverse plans succeed... forget about Venezuelan oil, Mr Bush," Mr Chavez said during his weekly TV show.
Well, the paranoid are sometimes persecuted, too.
PS: North Korea's latest temper tantrum is an accusation against Japan of planning to invade it. Of course, in a region where people have very long memories, this is an attempt at reminding its neighbours South Korea and China that Japan is their common, traditonal enemy. Raising the spectre of Japanese militarism has no doubt some potency in the Far East. As is often the case, there is a system in the madness.
3:32:47 AM
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Mark Steyn argues that the US policy on Europe now is 'no giggling.' Bush, Rice and even Rumsfeld may be seen as conducting a charm offensive to old Europe, but really, France and Germany doesn't matter very much anymore.
What does all this mean? Nothing. In victory, magnanimity – and right now Bush can afford to be magnanimous, even if Europe isn't yet ready to acknowledge his victory. On Thursday, in a discussion of "the greater Middle East", the President remarked that Syria was "out of step". And, amazingly, he's right. Not so long ago, Syria was perfectly in step with the Middle East – it was the archetypal squalid stable Arab dictatorship. Two years on, Syria hasn't changed, but Iraq has, and, to varying degrees, the momentum in Jordan, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, the Palestinian Authority and Lebanon (where the Syrians have overplayed their hand) is also in the Bush direction. Boy Assad finds himself in the position of the unfortunate soldier in Irving Berlin's First World War marching song, "They Were All Out Of Step But Jim".
The EU isn't the Arab League, though for much of the past three years it's been hard to tell the difference. But it, too, is out of step. The question is whether the Europeans are smart enough, like the savvier Sunnis in Iraq, to realise it. The Washington Post's Fred Hiatt compared the President's inaugural speech with Gerhard Schröder's keynote address to the Munich Conference on Security Policy last week and observed that, while both men talked about the Middle East, terrorism and 21st-century security threats, Mr Bush used the word "freedom" 27 times while Herr Schröder uttered it not once; he preferred to emphasise, as if it were still March 2003 and he were Arab League Secretary-General, "stability" – the old realpolitik fetish the Administration has explicitly disavowed. It's not just that the two sides aren't speaking the same language, but that the key phrases of Mr Bush's vocabulary don't seem to exist in Chirac's or Schröder's.
Even as the often excessive rhetoric is now played down, the real differences remain. But if Americans start to buy French wines again, Chirac at least has something to smile about.
Life imitates parody: Remember JibJab's Second Term? It may not be a barbeque, but Bush certainly seems to "extend a friendly offer." And he almost succeeds in holding back that giggle.
3:16:20 AM
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Two somewhat interconnected stories from Iraq appear near the top of Memeorandum right now.
Patrick Quinn at Associated Press reports that Sunni leaders want to get into the democratic government (better late than never):
U.S. Marines and Iraqi security forces launched an offensive Sunday against insurgents in troubled cities west of Baghdad after two days of carnage that left nearly 100 people dead. Sunni Muslim tribal leaders met to determine their place in a Shiite-dominated Iraqi government.
As the Shiite majority prepared to take control of the country's first freely elected government, tribal chiefs representing Sunni Arabs in six provinces issued a list of demands — including participation in the government and drafting a new constitution — after previously refusing to acknowledge the vote's legitimacy.
"We made a big mistake when we didn't vote," said Sheik Hathal Younis Yahiya, 49, a representative from northern Nineveh. "Our votes were very important."
He said threats from insurgents — not sectarian differences — kept most Sunnis from voting.
Reuters reports that the US has back-channel negotiations with the nationalist part of the rebellion:
U.S. diplomats and intelligence officers are conducting secret talks with Iraq's Sunni insurgents on ways to end fighting there, Time magazine reported on Sunday, citing Pentagon and other sources. [...]
A U.S. officer tried to get names of other insurgent leaders while the Iraqi complained the new Shi'ite-dominated government was being controlled by Iran, according to an account of the meeting provided by the Iraqi negotiator.
"We are ready to work with you," the Iraqi negotiator said, according to Time.
Iraqi insurgent leaders not aligned with al Qaeda ally Abu Mousab al-Zarqawi told the magazine several nationalist groups composed of what the Pentagon calls "former regime elements" have become open to negotiating.
The insurgents said their aim was to establish a political identity that can represent disenfranchised Sunnis.
Chalabi, however, issued a warning that Iraq's government would not feel bound by US-rebel negotiations.
If the Baathist part of the 'insurgency' collapses as Sunni Arabs join the democratic process, the terrorists will find themselves short of friends, resources and places to hide.
2:55:16 AM
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© Copyright 2005 Jan Haugland.
Last update: 01.03.2005; 01:30:50.
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