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21. juni 2005
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Kofi Annan in the WaPo: "There's Progress in Iraq"
If you would excuse me for being cynical, I may suggest that the UNSCAM revelations snapping at his heels may well have convinced the Secretary General to be as supportive of the US administration as possible at this time. Of course, one cannot help noting that Annan sets the UN up for taking far more credit for whatever goes right in Iraq than the organisation strictly deserves.
All that said, Annan's support for democracy in Iraq now, when everybody seems to go wobbly, is valuable.
PS: And just today, when Roger reports another set of revelations about oil-for-food from Claudia Rosett.
The story points to a pattern of crony connections and questionable practices at the United Nations, including family ties between U.N. officials and the organization’s multi-billion dollar contracting business for goods and services. Along the way it raises fresh questions about the already battered credibility of the U.N.-authorized investigation into Oil-for-Food, led by former Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker.
The staffer in question is Alexander Yakovlev, a dapper Russian who is possibly the longest tenured member of the U.N. procurement department — which last year alone spent more than $1.3 billion buying supplies and services for the United Nations.
Read on. If you've followed UNSCAM, you'll recognise a lot of familiar names.
4:26:44 PM 
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A GlobalterrorAlert.com analysis (PDF) of foreign terrorists "martyred" in Iraq June 2003-June 2005 shows that Saudi nationals totally dominate the country of origin breakdown.
Fully 55% of the dead terrorists were from Saudi Arabia. 12.7% from Syria and 5.3% from Kuwait rounds up the top three.
Hat tip Counterterrorism Blog, which also discusses Saudi Arabia's broken promises on putting an end to illegal terrorism financing.
Mansour al-Noqaidin, a former Saudi extremist says that recruitment is done by people in very high places, in both the government and the clergy. These people only clandestinely support terrorism, but run "weekend camps" training young boys to become martyrs, especially in Iraq.
Condi Rice has just landed in Riyadh, after firing a rhetorical shot at the country's crackdown on pro-democracy dissidents. She and the Saudi leaders have a lot to discuss.
12:05:19 PM
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Syria appears to be a very sore loser.
Around 10 AM Beirut time, George Hawi, former Lebanese communist party General Secretary, a National Leader who fought against the Syrian occupation was assassinated in West Beirut's Wata Elmusaitbeh district at the Cola Round About.
This happened in less than 3 weeks, since Samir Kassir the prominent anti Syrian Journalist of Alnahar newspaper was assassinated. Hawi's assassination was almost a photocopy of Samir Kassir's. He was killed by a booby trapped car that exploded as soon as he entered it and died instantly.
The driver of Hawi, Thabet Bazzi was seriously injured and taken immediately to the hospital.
BBC says the bomb was placed under the passenger seat and triggered by remote control.
The intention behind these attacks can only be the destabilise Lebanon, hoping to set off a secterian war. Possibly, Assad hopes Lebanon falls into chaos, to demonstrate the Lebanese couldn't handle independence. I hope and believe this will have the opposite effect.
11:41:48 AM
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It is obviously a cause for concern when amorous couples decide to go all the way in a public shop. But it is cause for panic when the couple is a cow and a bull, as happened in a small shop in Pionersk in Russia. The cow came in first, followed by a bull with a very clear mission.
A startled salesgirl fled outside where help was summoned with a mobile phone.
Yet there was nothing for it but to wait for the "end of the act" after which the pair vacated the premises.
The owners of the shop in the port on the Baltic, in the Kaliningrad region, were counting the damage on Monday as the owners of the offending beasts were sought, local police told Interfax.
No china was damaged in the act, though, but a lot of glass and, I imagine, quite a bit of other stuff as well.
[But seriously, Jan, that headline.... --ed. All right. You write them yourself next time!]
7:51:11 AM
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 A Palestinian woman, 21-year-old Wafa al-Biss, had suffered serious burns in a kitchen accident, and was granted permission to receive medical treatment in Israel. She repaid it by strapping herself with explosives, apparently intending to blow herself up at the hospital. She was discovered at an Israeli checkpoint and failed to blow herself up.
At the Shikma Prison in Israel's Negev Desert, where the Shin Bet security service allowed Israeli TV reporters to interview her, al-Biss said she was determined to carry out a suicide attack against Israel because of its occupation of the West Bank and Gaza.
"My dream was to be a martyr," she said, adding that she was recruited by the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, a violent offshoot of Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas' Fatah movement. "I believe in death."
Sitting calmly across from an Israeli TV interviewer, the young woman with large brown eyes and curly dark hair pulled back in a ponytail said her decision had nothing to do with her disfigurement, which might make her less desirable as a bride.
"Don't think that because of how I look I wanted to carry out an attack," said al-Biss. "Since I was a little girl I wanted to carry out an attack."
However, her story grew more contradictory as the interview progressed. After more than an hour, she began to lose her composure and changed her story.
These checkpoints, obviously a major hassle for Palestinian civilians, forms a major basis for anti-Israeli attacks in the leftist European press. Now who has this woman and the terrorists persuading her to commit the atrocity really hurt the most?
This is not just a failure to 'rein in' the terrorists. The Al Aqsa thugs have always been under the control of the Palestinian Authority and Fatah itself, and I have seen no reason to doubt that has changed.
Even worse is the cult of death that ferments the Palestinian territories, fueled by clerics and politicians, which shows no sign of ending. This massive death propaganda is obviously instrumental in convincing young people that 'martyrdom' is the highest calling.
6:27:34 AM
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The Associated Press buys the story about Iran's vast voter turnout, and turns it into a bit of Bush-bashing.
The sharp barbs from President Bush were widely seen in Iran as damaging to pro-reform groups because the comments appeared to have boosted turnout among hard-liners in Friday's election _ with the result being that an ultraconservative now is in a two-way showdown for the presidency.
"I say to Bush: `Thank you,'" quipped Intelligence Minister Ali Yunesi. "He motivated people to vote in retaliation."
It's rather amusing to see the leftist blogs bashing Bush for condemning a thug regime and telling the truth about its sham elections, which elects a leader that is not even a proper figurehead. Perhaps more telling is accepting the claims about a huge turnout based on the say-so of the Iranian government. The AP piece is pure pro-Mullah, anti-US propaganda, not even mentioning the obvious signs of electoral fraud, but lining up a bunch of the usual suspects to repeat the same assertions.
Michael Ledeen, a close follower of Iran, is not impressed. In fact, he argues the electoral fraud was so ineptly executed it is going to backfire.
The lowest participation — maybe as low as 3-5 percent — was in Khuzestan Province, where there had been bombings and protests in recent weeks. But anecdotal evidence from all over the country indicated a very low turnout, as of late afternoon. Despite this, the mullahs trotted out rosy reports of big voter turnouts, and even broadcast "live" TV coverage of voters queued up, waiting patiently to make their voices heard.
The only problem was that the pictures were from past elections. One woman called up a Tehran radio station to say that she was sitting at home watching the tube, and saw herself voting. Very droll indeed.
It fooled the AP; but it's unlikely to fool many in Iran.
PS: Ledeen also argues that the "sovereign country" where Osama Bin Laden is hiding according to Porter Goss, is Iran. Bill Roggio agrees.
3:13:28 AM
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Yuck:
An art work purportedly made from excess fat from Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi has been sold for $18,000 (£9,862).
Switzerland-based artist Gianni Motti claims to have bought the fat from a clinic where the leader had a liposuction operation performed.
Pretty sick.
Update: More questionable art. This doesn't ruin your meal, I promise.
2:43:41 AM
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Wired:
Twenty-eight floors above the traffic-choked streets of China's most wired city, blogger and tech entrepreneur Isaac Mao sums up his opinion of Microsoft and its treatment of the Chinese bloggers with one word. "Evil," says Mao. "Internet users know what's evil and what's not evil, and MSN Spaces is an evil thing to Chinese bloggers."
Unlike the Mac and Linux crowd, he certainly has a very good reason to be using that word.
It's all in the interests of the shareholders, of course, which fuels (ironically, since this is about China) the left's claim that capitalism is heartless and exploitive.
2:37:50 AM
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© Copyright 2005 Jan Haugland.
Last update: 01.07.2005; 11:18:47.
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