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16. mai 2005
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The Darth Side, purporting to be Darth Vader's blog, is brilliantly written and quite funny. I am not a Star Wars junkie, but from my recollection it appears to follow the epic movies closely, with obvious additions. The saga is now approaching its climax, but it's well worth reading back to see how it develops from the perspective of the dark overlord.
11:29:44 PM 
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A KFOR video where Norwegian soldiers from the Telemark batallion have prominent roles are making waves in Serbia. Apparently it is American soldiers who sing to the tune of the Beach Boys' Kokomo (which easily becomes Kosovo), but a lot of the soldiers you see making fools of themselves in the video are Norwegian. A line mentioning the killing of Serb "bad boys" was too much for the Serb public, noting the KFOR forces are supposed to be impartial peace-keepers.
Norway's involvment in the Kosovo war notwithstanding, Serbs consider Norway a traditional ally, especially since close ties were formed between the two countries during World War II. Many Serb partisan prisoners were suffering in German labour camps in Norway, and Norwegian care for the prisoners was much appreciated. Thus these insults hurt badly coming from Norwegian soldiers in Kosovo.
The Norwegian defence staff stands by its men as always: spokesman Geir Anda says "this is unacceptable" and promises a full investigation and disciplinary reactions towards the involved troops.
For cheesy dance moves, apparently.
11:21:03 PM
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For a brief second, I thought I was a bit clever or original when I used the headline "Newsweek lied, people died."
I guess some headlines write themselves, all over the blogosphere.
Via Instapundit, which is all over this story.
The error and half-baked apology notwithstanding, the damage Newsweek and Michael Isikoff has done in Afghanistan and Pakistan is not easily undone. The Muslim extremists who seized on this story can all too easily dismiss the climbdown as a result of US government pressure.
But Muslims said they suspected that pressure from Washington was behind the magazine's climbdown, Reuters reported Monday.
"We will not be deceived by this," Islamic cleric Mullah Sadullah Abu Aman told Reuters in the northern Afghan province of Badakhshan.
"This is a decision by America to save itself. It comes because of American pressure. Even an ordinary illiterate peasant understands this and won't accept it."
More literate people will realise that any government pressure would just make any independent media source dig in. But living in a world where censorship is widespread and mandatory, it is probably not easy to understand how things work in the free world.
Update: A comment from Raging Bee alerted me to a Salon/Guardian piece by Julia Day showing that Newsweek, well, digs in [here in daypass-free version]:
But in an interview, the Newsweek editor Mark Whitaker mounted a robust defense of his staff, insisting the magazine would not make any retraction, that it did nothing "professionally wrong" and that nobody at the magazine would be disciplined over the report. [...]
"I don't see what we did professionally wrong in this case."
Of course, now they are scrambling to find more people, be they jihadists or leftist hacks, supporting the original flushing story. That is called missing the point. Basing an inflamatory story on an anonymous source who may or may not remember what he read in some document is irresponsible, period. If this is according to the standards of professional journalism, these standards have to change.
6:00:35 PM
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CT scans shows that women's brains are much more vulnerable to alcohol damage than men.
The University of Heidelberg team published their findings in Alcoholism.
In the study, around half of the volunteers were alcoholics. All of the volunteers had brain scans at the start and end of the six week study.
Those who were alcoholic were helped to "dry out" during the six weeks.
When the researchers analysed the brain scan results they found obvious evidence of brain damage among the heavy drinkers.
The drinkers had smaller brains, due to loss or atrophy, than the controls.
With women increasingly picking up men's drinking habits, we may see some nasty health effects in the long run.
3:09:03 PM
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In 1995, Srebrenica was declared a protected area by the United Nations. We know what happened, the Dutch soldiers merely watched as the Serbs overran the town and more than 7,000 Bosnian Muslim men were brutally murdered. Now victims' relatives are suing the Dutch government. Here is a much revealing quote:
The first witness on Thursday, a personnel officer identified as B Osterveen, said the Dutch UN battalion was unprepared for a Serb onslaught.
Asked what the troops had done to ready themselves, the Associated Press news agency reported that he replied: "We hadn't considered that."
Commanded by the French, manned by the Dutch and organised by the United Nations. How could it have ended differently?
Via Stockholm Spectator.
1:12:19 PM
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Regular readers of this bliog will know I like reporting weird and uncomfortable news from courts around the world. So does MooreMarjo at News & Views from Philadelphia (check it out!), who also noticed the story about Paula Roemer being awarded $45,000 for a dead cat. Unlike me, MM noticed that one argument put forth was that she had become a chain smoker after the cat's death!
Just watch: Next Mrs Roemer will sue the tobacco companies!
3:22:31 AM
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The Newsweek's report that US servicemen on Guantanamo Bay desevrated a Qur'an by flushing it down the toilet set off violent protests in Afghanistan, killing many people and stoking anti-American feelings in the young democracy. Now, Newsweek has found out the whole report was based on a single anonymous source who is no longer sure what he remembers:
On Friday night, Pentagon spokesman DiRita called NEWSWEEK to complain about the original PERISCOPE item. He said, "We pursue all credible allegations" of prisoner abuse, but insisted that the investigators had found none involving Qur'an desecration. DiRita sent NEWSWEEK a copy of rules issued to the guards (after the incidents mentioned by General Myers) to guarantee respect for Islamic worship. On Saturday, Isikoff spoke to his original source, the senior government official, who said that he clearly recalled reading investigative reports about mishandling the Qur'an, including a toilet incident. But the official, still speaking anonymously, could no longer be sure that these concerns had surfaced in the SouthCom report. Told of what the NEWSWEEK source said, DiRita exploded, "People are dead because of what this son of a bitch said. How could he be credible now?"
Newsweek has issued an editorial apologising for the error:
Top administration officials have promised to continue looking into the charges, and so will we. But we regret that we got any part of our story wrong, and extend our sympathies to victims of the violence and to the U.S. soldiers caught in its midst.
Too little, too bloody late.
How the hell could a news magazine print a story based on a single source far removed from the incident, who only had some vague recall of the actual incident?
This is far bigger, far worse than memogate. This is an indictment on the way mainstream media works, being way too reliant on anonymous sources telling a story that is just too good to check.
Update: Roger L. Simon is as furious as the rest of us. He was also the person who raised serious factual objections about the story before it broke down:
Sources? Multiple? I'd like to see backing for that. And is that one source for the Qur'an story and another for the collar and leash episode or are they multiple (anonymous, of course) sources for the same story? Newsweek isn't saying. In fact what is Newsweek's policy about this? Inquiring (and moral) minds would like to know.
But never mind that. Even the simple mind would like to know how you flush a Qur'an down a toilet? It doesn't take the late Johnny Cochran to see there is a problem here. ("If the Qur'an don't fit, you must acquit!") Of course, someone could have been doing this desecrating page by page, though it is unlikely, unless Guantanamo has some extraordinary plumbing, that he or she would have gotten very far.
Strange that the mainstream media, which has repeated similar accusations for months now, didn't ask such an obvious question. I mean, they have fact-checkers and editors and stuff, don't they?
2:12:50 AM
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© Copyright 2005 Jan Haugland.
Last update: 01.06.2005; 06:44:53.
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