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22. september 2005
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Captain Ed chides the Pentagon for playing games with Able Danger.
I wonder if we'll ever find out if this military programme really identified Atta and the others, and whether its methodologies really offer some predictive powers in the war on terror. It's tragic if covering asses is now more important than learning from mistakes and improving security.
10:37:07 PM 
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There have been 17 named storms in the Atlantic this season, and the National Hurricane Center is about to run out of names.
There are only four names left for tropical storms and hurricanes this year: Stan, Tammy, Vince and Wilma. After that, names switch to the 24 letters of the Greek alphabet: Alpha, Beta, Gamma, Delta and so on through Omega, if needed.
That has never happened before in roughly 60 years of regularly named Atlantic storms.
It's been said that foreign wars were the primary method of teaching Americans geography. Now hurricanes may teach them the Greek alphabet.
10:14:50 PM
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Reporters Without Borders has released a handbook for bloggers who want to protect themselves against censors.
The media watchdog said it gives people who want to set up a blog tips on how to do so, how to publicise it, as well as how to establish credibility.
It also offers advice about writing blogs from countries with tough media restrictions, such as Iran and China.
The handbook was part-funded by the French government.
Key international bloggers, experts and writers helped to produce the guidelines, such as US journalist Dan Gillmor and Canadian net censorship expert, Nart Villeneuve.
"Bloggers are often the only real journalists in countries where the mainstream media is censored or under pressure," Reporters Without Borders said on its website.
"Only they provide independent news, at the risk of displeasing the government and sometimes courting arrest."
No wonder the powers that be want to stamp out blogging.
5:50:01 PM
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Some time ago, Christopher Hitchens was on the Daily Show and sparred with Jon Stewart. Ivory Power has the video.
3:47:26 PM
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Bird flu, also called avian flu, is breaking out in Indonesia. Local authorities call it an epidemic.
Indonesia called an outbreak of bird flu in its teeming capital an epidemic on Wednesday as health and agricultural experts from around the world converged on Jakarta to help control the virus.
Health Minister Siti Fadillah Supari said the emergence of sporadic human cases of bird flu in recent months in and around different parts of Jakarta, home to 12 million people, warranted the epidemic tag.
She was speaking before announcing that an initial local test on a five-year-old girl who died on Wednesday after suffering from bird flu symptoms was negative for the virus.
"This can be described as an epidemic. These (cases) will happen again as long as we cannot determine the source," Supari told reporters, but she insisted it would be wrong to label it a "frightening epidemic."
Well, it frightens me.
Especially if we combine it with some recent bad news on flu preparedness.
Resistance to anti-flu drugs has risen by 12 percent worldwide in the past decade, scientists said on Thursday in a finding that could pose problems for health officials trying to avert a pandemic.
Researchers at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found resistance to a class of drugs used to treat influenza for more than 30 years rose from 0.4 percent in 1994-1995 to 12.3 percent by 2004.
In some countries in Asia, where scientists suspect the next strain of flu with pandemic potential will originate, drug resistance exceeded 70 percent.
I have earlier mentioned China's criminal negligence in overusing antibiotics, which may well be one cause of this dramatic increase in resistance.
Expert says we are not prepared for avian flu, or any other major pandemic, should it really go global.
Julie Gerberding, director of the Atlanta-based Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), said the world's defences against flu were improving but remained inadequate.
This may well be the number one immediate threat we face right now.
4:26:09 AM
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Hurricane Rita is now a category 5 storm, the third most intense hurricane on record ever.
With Rita projected to hit Texas by Saturday, Gov. Rick Perry urged residents along the state’s entire coast to begin evacuating. And New Orleans braced for the possibility that the storm could swamp the stricken city all over again.
Galveston, low-lying parts of Corpus Christi and Houston, and mostly emptied-out New Orleans were under mandatory evacuation orders as Rita sideswiped the Florida Keys and began drawing energy with terrifying efficiency from the warm waters of the Gulf of Mexico. Between 2 a.m. and 4 p.m., it went from a 115-mph Category 2 to a 165-mph Category 5.
After what Katrina did, I suspect most everybody heed the warnings and get out of the way.
The government is obviously also looking for a chance to get everything right this time.
Rita is expected to hit land on Saturday. As of now, it is headed for Texas, but a slight change of direction could prove utterly disastrous to very vulnerable New Orleans.
4:02:16 AM
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© Copyright 2005 Jan Haugland.
Last update: 01.10.2005; 12:25:49.
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