| |
|
19. januar 2006
|
|
New Horizons, NASA's mission to Pluto, launched successfully today, after earlier being delayed due to windy conditions.
Now, we'll all better stay healthy until July 2015, when it arrives, to learn about the most remote planet in our solar system (if it can be called a planet).
PS: Earlier coverage of New Horizons.
9:26:48 PM 
|
|
Just as speculation that Osama Bin Laden was dead, al-Jazeera broadcasts another audio tape from the al-Qaeda leader, the first words from him since December 2004. There is little, if anything, indicating when it was recorded, but it is a message directly to the American people. BBC has the full translated transcript.
Bush said: It is better to fight them on their ground than they fighting us on our ground.
Bin Laden argues al-Qaeda operations in Iraq are successful (he doesn't mention the elections at all), and that American losses are mounting. He also echoes the sentiments of many observers, that the Iraq war serves as a recruitment tool for the terrorists. Finally, he proposes a truce to the US, like he did to Europe after the Madrid attacks.
Based on the above, we see that Bush's argument is false.
However, the argument that he avoided, which is the substance of the results of opinion polls on withdrawing the troops, is that it is better not to fight the Muslims on their land and for them not to fight us on our land.
We do not object to a long-term truce with you on the basis of fair conditions that we respect.
We are a nation to which God has disallowed treachery and lying.
In this truce, both parties will enjoy security and stability and we will build Iraq and Afghanistan which were destroyed by the war.
By "we" I assume Bin Laden means the Muslim world, or rather, radicals in it he hopes would take control of Muslim lands if the west is forced to withdraw, so al-Qaeda can build a massive Kaliphate modelled on the Taliban. Hardly "security and stability" for anyone.
More sinister, Bin Laden also states that preparations for a terrorist strike on the United States is in the works.
As for the delay in carrying out similar operations in America, this was not due to the failure to breach your security measures.
Operations are in preparation and you will see them on your own ground once the preparations are finished, God willing.
After almost five years, it is safe to say that al-Qaeda's failure to attack the US itself, the "great satan", is due to its inability to do so. Whether the above is blustering, or whether the terrorists have found a way to breach US security, is too early to tell.
PS: In al-Jazeera's translation, Bin Laden says the attack is imminent, "you'll see it in your homeland very soon." This is a totally different meaning. I'm waiting for Arab experts to chime in here, as "very soon" indicates much stronger confidence that something is going to happen.
PS 2: Evan Kohlmann debunked the alleged "death" of Osama Bin Laden a few days back. Good timing!
On the same blog, Walid Phares and Daveed Gartenstein-Ross has started doing a thorough analysis of the message.
PS 3: As the media says, the voice is not "authenticated", but I don't remember a single case where al-Jazeera broadcast an al-Qaeda tape that proved to be a fake. So I think we can safely assume it's the real thing.
Update: Al-Jazeera's "very soon" statement apparently occurred in the parts of Bin Laden's 10 minute tape it chose not to broadcast, not the excerpt translated by the BBC.
9:11:46 PM
|
|
Jeffrey Zeldman has an excellent rant called Web 3.0, and yes, he's being sarcastic.
Here is where the spinners bedazzle the easily confused. Consider this scenario:
Steven, a young web wiz, has just celebrated his bar mitzvah. He received a dozen gifts and must write a dozen thank-you notes. Being webbish, he creates an on-line “Thank-You Note Generator.” Steven shows the site to his friends, who show it to their friends, and soon the site is getting traffic from recipients of all sorts of gifts, not just bar mitzvah stuff.
If Steven created the site with CGI and Perl and used tables for layout, this is the story of a boy who made a website for his own amusement, perhaps gaining social points in the process. He might even contribute to a SXSW Interactive panel.
But if Steven used AJAX and Ruby on Rails, Yahoo will pay millions and Tim O’Reilly will beg him to keynote.
The web is still a great place, despite, not because of, the bloody hype.
8:42:42 AM
|
|
 ABC News says that the missile stikes in Pakistan indeed killed three very senior al-Qaeda leaders, including Midhat Mursi, aka Abu Khabab al-Masri (picture), a chemical weapons and explosives expert who has trained many terrorist operatives who have committed atrocities around the world.
The United States had posted a $5 million reward for Mursi's capture. He is described by authorities as the man who ran al Qaeda's infamous Derunta training camp in Afghanistan, where he used dogs and other animals as subjects for experiments with poison and chemicals. His explosives training manual is still regarded as the bible for al Qaeda terrorists around the world.
"He wants to cause mayhem, major death, and he puts his expertise on the line. So the fact that we took him out is significant," said former FBI agent Jack Cloonan, an ABC News consultant, who was the senior agent on the FBI's al Qaeda squad. "He's the man who trained the shoe bomber Richard Reid and Zacarias Moussaoui, as well as hundreds of others."
Pakistani officials also said that Khalid Habib, the al Qaeda operations chief for Pakistan and Afghanistan, and Abdul Rehman al Magrabi, a senior operations commander for al Qaeda, were killed in the Damadola attack. Authorities tell ABC News that the terror summit was called to funnel new money into attacks against U.S. forces in Afghanistan.
Ayman al-Zawahiri apparently didn't turn up for dinner as expected, and this means he is probably still alive. But according to recent reports he is mourning the death of another top al-Qaeda leader, Abdul Rehman al-Misri, who is a relative of his, possibly his son-in-law. The third is Abu Ubaida, described as "the main operations chief for al-Qaida in Afghanistan's eastern Kunar province."
There are some conflicting reports about the identity of the killed terrorists. The above is not yet fully confirmed. Media gives as sources "Pakistan intelligence sources" while the Pentagon and the CIA are silent.
Evan Kohlmann has more information about Abu Khabab al-Masri. His terrorist activities goes back to at least 1995, when car bomb attack on Egypt's embassy in Pakistan killed 17 people and wounded 59 others. He has trained a significant number of terrorists operating in Europe. If he is indeed dead, we are all safer for this.
PS: You can find Midhat Mursi's "most wanted"- poster here.
8:19:49 AM
|
|
A small study published in Nature indicates a specific difference between men and women: men enjoy seeing a person perceived as bad suffer pain, while women tend to emphatise.
The scientists scanned the brains of 16 men and 16 women after the volunteers played a game with what they thought were other volunteers, but who in fact were actors. The actors either played the game fairly or obviously cheated.
During the brain scans, each volunteer watched as the hands of a "fair" player and a cheater received a mild electrical shock. When it came to the fair-player, both men's and women's brains showed activation in pain-related areas, indicating that they empathized with that player's pain.
But for the cheater, while the women's brains still showed a response, men's brains showed virtually no specific reaction. Also, in another brain area associated with feelings of reward, men's brains showed a greater average response to the cheater's shock than to the fair player's shock, while women's brains did not.
A questionnaire revealed that the men expressed a stronger desire than women did for revenge against the cheater. The more a man said he wanted revenge, the higher his jump in the brain's reward area when the cheater got a shock. No such correlation showed up in women.
Yeah, we're sadistic beasts.
8:03:55 AM
|
|
In Salmon Rushdie's latest novel, Shalimar the Clown, he is investigating how damaged male honour and men's fear of women's sexuality is the root of Islamic extremism. He is certainly in the position to know a bit about Islamic terrorism. Long before the west really woke up to the danger of Islamo-fascism, Salman Rushdie had to hide in fear of being killed by radical Muslims who wanted to make good on Ayatollah Khomeini's 1989 fatwa demanding his death (thus teaching the west a new word).
When asked if the book drew a link between "Islamic terror and damaged male honor," Rushdie said he saw it as a crucial, and often overlooked, point. "The Western-Christian world view deals with the issues of guilt and salvation, a concept that is completely unimportant in the East because there is no original sin and no savior," the author said, in comments printed in German.
"Instead, great importance is given to 'honor.' I consider that to be problematic. But of course it is underestimated how many Islamists consciously or unconsciously attempt to restore lost honor."
When asked why he probed the issues in his new novel in the context of a love triangle, he said: "It has a lot to do with sexual fear of women."
Certainly a better candidate for a root cause of terrorism than most other ideas put forth.
1:50:21 AM
|
|
|
© Copyright 2006 Jan Haugland.
Last update: 01.02.2006; 17:45:21.
|
|
|
