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16. april 2006
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Mark Steyn is not totally impressed with the reaction of the so-called world community to Iran's game of nuclear chicken. As a reaction to Iran's announcement it had started to enrich uranium, the US muttered that Iran "was moving in the wrong direction" and Britain sighed that this was "not helpful." I mean, I appreciate understatements as much as everybody else, but this goes over as helpless whingeing in Tehran.
You know what's great fun to do if you're on, say, a flight from Chicago to New York and you're getting a little bored? Why not play being President Ahmadinejad? Stand up and yell in a loud voice, "I've got a bomb!" Next thing you know the air marshal will be telling people, "It's OK, folks. Nothing to worry about. He hasn't got a bomb." And then the second marshal would say, "And even if he did have a bomb it's highly unlikely he'd ever use it." And then you threaten to kill the two Jews in row 12 and the stewardess says, "Relax, everyone. That's just a harmless rhetorical flourish." And then a group of passengers in rows 4 to 7 point out, "Yes, but it's entirely reasonable of him to have a bomb given the threatening behavior of the marshals and the cabin crew."
That's how it goes with the Iranians. The more they claim they've gone nuclear, the more U.S. intelligence experts -- oops, where are my quote marks? -- the more U.S. intelligence "experts" insist no, no, it won't be for another 10 years yet. The more they conclusively demonstrate their non-compliance with the IAEA, the more the international community warns sternly that, if it were proved that Iran were in non-compliance, that could have very grave consequences. But, fortunately, no matter how thoroughly the Iranians non-comply it's never quite non-compliant enough to rise to the level of grave consequences. You can't blame Ahmadinejad for thinking "our enemies cannot do a damned thing."
True.
It is, however, one thing to poke fun at the toothless reaction of western governments and international organisations, and nobody does that better than Mark Steyn, but another to actually execute a real, workable response to the threat. With George Bush's credibility in tatters, and Tony Blair having no stomach to tackle his country's war opponents again, this is really a matter of Iran calling a war, and only the Iranians turning up.
10:37:06 PM 
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Chinese authorities have introduced anti-spamming legislation, which also happens to require all the country's email servers to be licensed.
More than 600,000 servers were sold in China last year, according to market researchers. It's unclear how many of these are running mail server software, which includes programs like Microsoft Outlook Server, Sendmail, Qmail or Lotus Notes.
The new email licensing clause is just a small part of a new anti-spam law formulated by China's Ministry of Information Industry (MII). The chilling effect on corporate email servers, which are commonly used by companies with more than a handful of employees, appears to have gone unnoticed until now.
However, Singapore-based technology consultant, James Seng, who first drew attention to the new email licence requirement, believes the inclusion of the prohibition on mail servers is no accident.
“Looking at the Chinese text, it is clear they have worded it carefully”, he told vnnet, “They know exactly what they are doing and what they want. So this isn't a case of clueless civil servants screwing up or just bad translation.”
China has not yet decided to enforce this law, another example of it insisting on preventing free speech at virtually any cost. I have no doubt that this will seriously hamper China's economic development.
4:27:47 PM
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Ouch. The Washington Post's David Finkel has written a piece on leftist blogger Maryscott O'Connor from My Left Wing.
As for the keyboard, it is where O'Connor finished her evolution from lost soul to angry soul, beginning with that very first rant, which concluded with a wish that Bush, "after contracting incurable cancer and suffering for protracted periods of time without benefit of medication," go to hell.
She wrote it, sent it to Daily Kos, saw it appear online, watched as people responded to it -- and learned something about the effect of being both heartfelt and vicious. "It's impactful," she says. "It gets attention."
It also felt good, she says, transforming even, and soon she was posting regularly to Daily Kos, where she became one of the more widely read diarists with attention-getters such as "Go [expletive] Yourself, Mrs. Cheney" and "Bush Must Be HIV Positive By Now (you can't [expletive] 500 million people and not get infected)."
Then, ready to try her own site, she started My Left Wing, and now she is practically banging on the keyboard as she finishes a 1,000-word piece about the need for sanctions and peacekeeping forces as ways to stop the violence in Darfur.
It is really a hatchet job in a way, but, to be frank, it is a quite fair description of quite a bit of the deranged left. It feels like half the article is "[expletive]", and that fits the description of a lot of leftie blogs rather well, I have to say. If the tables in Washington DC were turned, as they may well be in a few years, I have no illusions about the rightist blogs being any better, but I still think it's appalling to see this kind of hate-fests. Obviously, the rightist blogs have a field day with this story.
Remember, whatever we may think, the blogosphere is still reaching a much smaller audience that big mainstream media, and what the WaPo writes may be all most readers will know about the leftist blogosphere at this point. There are many thoughtful left-of-center bloggers out there. Kevin Drum is probably one of the best. But it wouldn't make for such an entertaining article to write about that blog.
5:36:28 AM
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© Copyright 2006 Jan Haugland.
Last update: 01.05.2006; 13:04:30.
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