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31. januar 2006
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The legendary Israeli former intelligence opertative and terrorist expert Rafi Eitan is convinced that Iran already has one or two nuclear weapons.
Rafi Eitan suspects that Iran already has enough enriched uranium fissionable material to manufacture at least one or two atom bombs of the Hiroshima type. "Otherwise Iranian President Ahmadinejad would not have dared come out with his declaration that Israel should be wiped off the map," repeating it in various versions. His efforts at denying the Holocaust in which six million Jews were slaughtered prove that there is method in Ahmadinejad's madness. "Don't treat him like a madman," Chief of General Staff Dan Halutz recently cautioned.
I admit that this argument makes more sense than I like it to. That said, any such psychological evaluation from a distance is horribly prone to error.
Eitan predicts, omniously, a growing and brutal crackdown on all opposition in Iran, as Ahmadinejad and the real boss, Khamenei, forces Iran back to the days of the glory Islamic revolution. And then, who knows where the Mullahs will take this.
9:39:48 PM 
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Samuel Alito has been confirmed to the US Supreme Court.
Samuel Anthony Alito Jr. became the nation's 110th Supreme Court justice on Tuesday, confirmed with the most partisan victory in modern history after a fierce battle over the future direction of the high court.
The Senate voted 58-42 to confirm Alito _ a former federal appellate judge, U.S. attorney, and conservative lawyer for the Reagan administration from New Jersey _ as the replacement for retiring Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, who has been a moderate swing vote on the court.
As I am sure you know, the earlier liberal attempt to filibuster Alito failed miserable when the Senate voted 72-25 for cloture.
It will be interesting how the Supreme Court moves with Alito and Roberts presumably joining conservatives Scalia and Thomas to push the court towards the right. That, of course, is four of the nine.
I stand by my prediction that if the court should eventually overturn Roe v Wade, that will become an electoral disaster for the Republican party.
8:34:54 PM
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Jyllands-Posten, the Danish newspaper that printed the cartoons has issued a statement that is being interpreted as an apology.
In our opinion, the 12 drawings were sober. They were not intended to be offensive, nor were they at variance with Danish law, but they have indisputably offended many Muslims for which we apologize. [...]
Maybe because of culturally based misunderstandings, the initiative to publish the 12 drawings has been interpreted as a campaign against Muslims in Denmark and the rest of the world.
I must categorically dismiss such an interpretation. Because of the very fact that we are strong proponents of the freedom of religion and because we respect the right of any human being to practise his or her religion, offending anybody on the grounds of their religious beliefs is unthinkable to us.
That this happened was, consequently, unintentional.
This is not the newspaper apologising for having printed the cartoons. Chief editor Carsten Juste does not regret printing the cartoons, and does not say that he was wrong in doing so. He is apologising for Muslims being hurt by this. That is something entirely different.
In my opinion, what the newspaper has done is exactly right. There is nothing honourable about being gleeful over hurt feelings. While nobody has any sympathy with flag-burning, threatening thugs, there are undoubtedly many peaceful Muslims who are genuinly hurt. Regretting that fact is not compromising with freedom of speech.
If Muslims who were offended accept this, and the ridiculous controversy can be brought to an end, so much the better. Muslim organisations in Denmark has said they accept the apology and will lobby Muslim countries to stop the boycott calls. As Danes, they should do nothing less.
3:18:02 PM
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Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg (Labour), who earlier left the Mohammad cartoon controversy to his fumbling foreign minister, has for the first time commented on it. My translation:
- As prime minister in a country with freedom of speech I cannot apologise for what is printed in Norwegian newspapers, Stoltenberg says. But he also regrets that the caricatures of the prophet Mohammad has hurt the deepest religious feelings of many Muslims.
That is essentially the Danish position, and the one Jyllands-Posten has taken consistently: We're sorry that you're feeling hurt, that was not the intention, but we have freedom of speech here, so you have to accept that.
Take notes, Støre.
Stoltenberg was asked what he would do if he was the editor of a newspaper.
- I am prime minister and not editor. It is clear that freedom of speech also applies to utterances we don't like. But in a country with freedom of speech everybody has an obligation to consider what is wise.
Fair enough.
I have kept my comments on this topic concentrated on freedom of speech, and that means I fully support the rights of Jyllands-Posten, Magazinet and the cartoonists to make and publish the cartoons. I of course support them fully against intimidation, harassment and threats. Our governments have an obligation to defend them.
But that said, I agree with those who say that a few, but not all, of the infamous cartoons were rather crude racial stereotypes that left me a bad taste.
3:05:01 PM
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Now this is a surprising study: British researchers have found that our heads have grown taller over the last 600 years or so, from comparing old and modern skulls.
They looked at 30 skulls dating from the mid-14th Century. They had come from the unlucky victims of the plague. The skulls had been excavated from plague pits in the 1980s in London.
Another 54 skulls examined by the team were recovered from the wreck of the Mary Rose which sank off the south coast of England in 1545.
All the skulls were compared with 31 recent orthodontic records from the School of Dentistry in Birmingham.
The two principal differences discovered were that our ancestors had more prominent features, but their cranial vault - the distance measured from the eyes to the top of the skull - was smaller.
Dr Peter Rock, lead author of the study and director of orthodontistry at Birmingham University, told the BBC News website: "The astonishing finding is the increased cranial vault heights.
"The increase is very considerable. For example, the vault height of the plague skulls were 80mm, and the modern ones were 95mm - that's in the order of 20% bigger, which is really rather a lot."
The science of phrenology was discredited after going way too far, on bad data, but one of the dirty little secrets of anthropology is that there is a correlation (if not absolute) between the size of your head and the power of the brain inside it. If our skull has grown, on top in fact, this is a very strong indication that the brain power has increased, too.
If our brain power has increased, this is probably because there has been selective pressure for higher intelligence.
I have thought, until now, that humans have worked on quite exactly the same brainpower since the early stone age, and that only our world of ideas, the software running on our brains if you will, have improved. Now the above, if verified, indicates that even in the last centuries, humans have been subject to natural selection which has made our heads taller, and our brains more powerful.
Evolution is working its magic on us, probably even now.
Links: University of Birmingham press release. Abstract: A cephalometric comparison of skulls from the fourteenth, sixteenth and twentieth centuries.
Via forskning.no
2:26:33 PM
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The US and the other permanent members of the UN Security Council has agreed that Iran will be transferred.
China and Russia, longtime allies and trading partners of Iran, signed on to a statement that calls on the U.N. nuclear watchdog to transfer the Iran dossier to the Security Council, which could impose sanctions or take other harsh action.
Foreign ministers from those nations, plus the United States, Britain and France, also said the Security Council should wait until March to take up the Iran case, after a formal report on Tehran's activities from the watchdog agency, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).
Somewhat surprised that China went along with this compromise. But a lot can happen between now and March.
Iran, on its side, has earlier threatened to block oil supplies, not only its own, but those that pass through the vital strategic chokepoint the Hormuz strait, if that happens. Such a blockade, of course, is an act of war.
8:36:41 AM
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Ayman al-Zawahiri, al-Qaeda's number two, taunts Bush "the butcher" for failing to kill him in the missile strike on January 13.
"Butcher of Washington, you are not only defeated and a liar, but also a failure. You are a curse on your own nation and you have brought and will bring them only catastrophes and tragedies," he said, referring to Bush. "Bush, do you know where I am? I am among the Muslim masses."
Walid Phares comments extensively on the new tape from al-Zawahiri.
The new Zawahiri videotape released by al Jazeera today shows a sophistication in the propaganda war waged by the Jihadists worldwide against the US and its allies. Designed to "crumble" the morale of the American public and "boost" the commitments of the Jihadi forces, the tape is another attempt to score points in the War of ideas and media. The results were immediate in the West. The Associated Press immediate leads were stunning: 1) Zawahiri proves he wasn't killed by the US strike, therefore he scored one point against the US. 2) He labeled his enemy, the US President, as "butcher of Washington," hence attempting to rally the widest anti-American axis as possible AP lead. But the tape is not just that, another message from the number two in al Qaida. It is a very well orchestrated political offensive aimed at the nervous centers of the "enemy's public. A shot that may preceed action or asking for it.
Al-Qaeda tries to portray the US as the aggressor and the extreme, for not agreeing to a truce it labels reasonable.
8:00:54 AM
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© Copyright 2006 Jan Haugland.
Last update: 01.02.2006; 07:07:19.
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