9. februar 2006

- Zimbabwe to give land back to evicted whites I'd take this with a grain of salt until it is confirmed, but the Telegraph writes that Robert Mugabe is about to do a dramatic u-turn on his racist land garb. The U-turn is expected to be announced within days. The ruling Zanu-PF party's politburo has been informed and selected journalists in the state-controlled media have been briefed on how to spin the policy reversal. About 250 whites remaining on small portions of their farms will immediately be offered state leases for the land they used to own. Some will be hoping that their full land holdings will be restored at a later stage. The leases will, farmers hope, give them some legal protection from local warlords continuously trying to evict them or seize their equipment or crops. In a second stage, the leases will be extended to some white farmers who have already been evicted, particularly where there is no activity on that land. Some fled to Britain, Australia, New Zealand or South Africa and are desperately homesick. The government is expected to admit in the next few days that it has only used about 50 per cent of the land it seized. In reality, land economists say the figure of idle land is nearer 80 to 90 per cent. But can the evicted farmers trust Mugabe to not do another u-turn? 6:34:10 PM    comment []  trackback []

Bush: 9/11-style attack on LA in 2002 foiled President Bush has given details of an al-Qaeda terrorist plot against the Library Tower in Los Angeles, supposed to be planned for 2002. He said that Khalid Sheik Mohammed, the alleged mastermind of the Sept. 11 attacks who was captured in 2003, had already begun planning the West Coast operation in October, just after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. One of Mohammed's key planners was Hambali, the alleged operations chief of the al-Qaida related terrorist group Jemaah Islamiyah. Instead of recruiting Arab hijackers, Hambali found Southeast Asian men who would be less likely to arouse suspicion and who were sent to meet with Osama Bin Laden, Bush said. Under the plot, the hijackers were to use shoe bombs to blow open the cockpit door of a commercial jetliner, take control of the plane and crash it into the Library Tower in Los Angeles, since renamed the US Bank Tower, Bush said. In his remarks, Bush inadvertantly referred to the site as "Liberty Tower," and immediately afterward, the White House corrected him. The president said the plot was derailed when a Southeast Asian nation arrested a key al-Qaida operative. Hambali was captured in Thailand in 2003, and while I don't particularly recall any key operative arrested in South East Asia in 2002, it is reasonable to assume this may refer to the same country. PS: I am not sure if the deadly Indonesian terrorist Fathur Roman Al-Ghozi fits the description. He was captured in the Philippines in 2002, on his way to Thailand, but later managed to escape. He was killed under somewhat dubious circumstances in October 2003. 6:18:12 PM    comment []  trackback []

- Russia about to run out of vodka I'm sure this is one of the end-time signs. Stocks of vodka, Russia's national tipple, are running dangerously low because of a Soviet-style bureaucratic blunder that has brought production to a halt. Hardly a bottle of the grain-based spirit has been made since the beginning of the year, and as the mercury hovers around minus 20C, many vodka warehouses across the country are empty. "Could Russia completely run out of vodka in 40 days?" was the apocalyptic front-page headline of the Komsomolskaya Pravda newspaper yesterday, which published advice from a panel of politicians and celebrities on how to live without vodka and a cartoon of a man wringing a bottle of vodka as if it were wet laundry so as to extract every last drop. Careful about those cartoons! 5:54:02 PM    comment []  trackback []

Egyptian newspaper printed Danish cartoons in October 2005 Blogger Rantings of a Sandmonkey writes: Freedom For Egyptians reminded me why the cartoons looked so familiar to me: they were actually printed in the Egyptian Newspaper Al Fagr back in October 2005. I repeat, October 2005, during Ramadan, for all the egyptian muslim population to see, and not a single squeak of outrage was present. Al Fagr isn't a small newspaper either: it has respectable circulation in Egypt, since it's helmed by known Journalist Adel Hamoudah. Looking around in my house I found the copy of the newspaper, so I decided to scan it and present to all of you to see. Al Fagr printed them all, in large size. Have a look. Really puts the 'outrage' in perspective. PS: More disclosures about those lying Danish imams. It is more and more obvious that the allaged 'outrage' was pretty much fabricated and manipulated. 7:20:09 AM    comment []  trackback []

Afghans attack the USA over cartoons Mr President, you of everybody should know that appeasement doesn't work. Police killed four people Wednesday as Afghans enraged over drawings of the Prophet Muhammad marched on a U.S. military base in a volatile southern province, directing their anger not against Europe but America.  It just had to happen sooner or later. They've run out of Danish and Norwegian flags. 12:16:36 AM    comment []  trackback []

© Copyright 2006 Jan Haugland. Last update: 01.03.2006; 16:49:32.