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3. mars 2005
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As I have written earlier, Norway has a very high rate of drug use and especially deaths from heroin overdoses. One reason is that Norwegian drug addicts to a high degree inject the heroin instead of smoking it, as is common elsewhere. With varying quality street drugs, the danger for a lethal overdose is obviously high.
Controversially, Norway has opened for Oslo to have an injection room, where heroin addicts can safely inject heroin under controlled circumstances, and where health-care professionals are at hand. This also allows social workers to keep contact with the drug addicts.
Norway also were among the first countries to have a near-total ban on smoking in indoor public areas.
Of course, the injection room, where politicians have given addicts permission to inject illegal heroin, bans smoking.
The leader of the injection room Sindre Ringvik is now arguing there should be a dispensation for smoking in this locale, too. The social workers have been trying to convince addicts to smoke heroin instead of injecting it, but then they had to be sent out in the streets. Now the politicians are considering a smoking permission for the room, too.
(From a Norwegian article in Aftenposten)
9:08:22 PM 
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The Federal Election Commission may seriously crack down on political content on the Internet, including blogs, and consider a link to a candidate's site or a quotation from a press release a donation!
Bradley Smith says that the freewheeling days of political blogging and online punditry are over.
In just a few months, he warns, bloggers and news organizations could risk the wrath of the federal government if they improperly link to a campaign's Web site. Even forwarding a political candidate's press release to a mailing list, depending on the details, could be punished by fines.
Smith should know. He's one of the six commissioners at the Federal Election Commission, which is beginning the perilous process of extending a controversial 2002 campaign finance law to the Internet.
In 2002, the FEC exempted the Internet by a 4-2 vote, but U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly last fall overturned that decision. "The commission's exclusion of Internet communications from the coordinated communications regulation severely undermines" the campaign finance law's purposes, Kollar-Kotelly wrote.
Smith and the other two Republican commissioners wanted to appeal the Internet-related sections. But because they couldn't get the three Democrats to go along with them, what Smith describes as a "bizarre" regulatory process now is under way.
Bizarre is the right word, if this is true.
Hat tip to MacRaven.
5:48:24 PM
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Even Russia joins in on demanding that Syria withdraws from Lebanon:
"Syria should withdraw from Lebanon, but we all have to make sure that this withdrawal does not violate the very fragile balance which we still have in Lebanon, which is a very difficult country ethnically," Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov told the BBC late on Wednesday.
Russia, Syria's main Cold War ally and still one of its best friends, abstained when the U.N. Security Council adopted U.S.- and French-sponsored Resolution 1559 in September calling for foreign forces to leave Lebanon and militias to disarm.
But Lavrov said the resolution, like any other Council measure, must be implemented -- a stance that further ratcheted up world pressure on Syria to withdraw its 14,000 troops.
Russia for once recognises a lost cause when it sees it. Of course it doesn't want another of its Middle East allies totally isolated.
Syria tried to get help from its allies in Egypt and Saudi Arabia to delay the withdrawal and maybe draw Israel into it, but the killing of Hariri, though not directly linked to Damascus, is unlikely to leave them many friends there. Besides, the two countries have quite a bit of pressure to deal with themselves.
3:21:45 PM
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There exists many photographs of World War I (1914-1918), but the only colour photographs of the war were taken by the French army. This is a great collection of pictures, making the horrible conflict come to life and make us realise it was not that long ago. Unfortunately there is no comments to the pictures, but they are definately worth a look.
4:08:32 AM
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While the British royals are making scandals, I'm glad the Norwegian royal family, currently visiting New York, is making a good impression. But the headline is a bit over the top:
New Yorkers spellbound
Let's get real! I bet very few New Yorkers even realise they are there. Unsurprisingly, the only press coverage so far is in our local newspapers back home.
Don't get me wrong. I have lots of respect for our royal family, but fact is the only way to get them widely recognised is some nasty scandal. Better this way.
3:52:41 AM
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The US managed to upset quite a few people at the UN women's conference, and while I sympathise with upsetting United Nations conferences on a general principle, I don't think abortion is the ideal subject.
In closed-door negotiations, the Bush administration demanded that a U.N. document on women's equality be amended to say abortion is not a fundamental right.
But that proposal sparked controversy at the women's meeting, a two-week review session of progress since a landmark women's conference in Beijing in 1995.
Diplomats close to the negotiations here said the Bush administration, which opposes abortion at home and abroad, probably would drop the demand, and the top U.S. delegate hinted at it in an address to participants.
"The United States recognizes the ... principle that abortion policies are a matter of national sovereignty," said Ellen Sauerbrey, who heads the U.S. delegation.
The Bush administration's objective was to prevent abortion from being listed as a universal right. Obviously, far more countries than the US would possibly refuse to ratify such a document.
I don't think either side in the US really wants an abortion conflict now. But it's probably a good idea for Bush to pretend to throw some meat to his "base" from time to time.
3:35:16 AM
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© Copyright 2005 Jan Haugland.
Last update: 01.04.2005; 01:56:49.
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