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30. oktober 2007
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This must be one of the most unlikely accidents ever. As you can see from the picture (more here and especially here), a helicopter crashed upside down into a fully loaded tank truck.
This being Rakkestad in eastern Norway, not Hollywood, it didn't explode. Amazingly, it didn't even catch fire. All three involved, including the truck driver who was soaked in diesel while sitting in the driver's seat, got away with only minor injuries.
7:48:31 PM 
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Israel bombed a possible nuclear facility in Syria, which was quickly cleaned up by the Syrians. Now old satellite photos reveal that this facility was running at least as early as 2003.
The New York Times has published a remarkable piece on October 27 suggesting that satellite imagery which is now available commercially showed the construction of a nuclear facility in Syria that was well-developed as early as the summer of 2003, and which had been initiated as early as 2001.
In the measured prose of the Times, the information "is likely to raise questions about whether the Bush administration overlooked a nascent atomic threat in Syria while planning and executing a war in Iraq, which was later found to have no active nuclear program."
It's interesting to note which public figure believed that Syria had a nuclear programme back then.
Public hints about the Syrian program by U.S. government officials go back to 2003, appearing amid a fight between then Under Secretary of State John Bolton and intelligence analysts regarding Mr. Bolton's contention that Syria was actively pursuing nuclear capabilities, which the CIA reportedly viewed to be "inflated."
CIA may be right or wrong on this - the jury is out - but one thing is clear: for its horrible track record, what is surely inflated is the CIA's budget. Give me $50 billion, and I'll come up with much better intelligence.
PS: Some good news on the war on terror, for once, about how the financial war against al-Qaeda has crippled its operations. I hope that is true.
7:38:23 PM
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This year has seen - so far - the lowest hurricane activity in 30 years in the North Atlantic.
The North Atlantic hurricane season is currently nearly 30% below normal in terms of a well-known activity metric called ACE. While the number of named storms is above normal, their integrated intensity has not matched the hyper-active expectations of many seasonal forecasters (e.g. NOAA 140-200% above median). The Eastern Pacific off the western coast of Mexico is also experiencing record inactivity.
You may remember that last year was exceptionally quiet, but the doomsayers were predicting that 2007 would be be a record hurricane season. For that to become true, the next few weeks have to be pure mayhem!
I wrote this back in April:
Apparently, the tail of El Nino now in 2007 is supposed to result in a record hurricane season. It's easy being a weatherman in the global warming panic age: nobody remembers your misses, but your hits get headline coverage (compare: Texas sharpshooter fallacy).
I still think it may be interesting to revisit this prediction in half a year or so.
You actually get more reliable hurricane predictions on this blog than from the climate experts.
Via InstaPundit, who notices the trendy shift to blaming the California wildfires on global warming instead. You can't win.
7:29:31 PM
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Just as the Queen is treating the visiting King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia to a red carpet welcome, a report reveals that Islamist extremist literature is peddled in around half of the investigated British Mosques, many of which are heavily funded by the Saudis.
Some of the fundamentalist works were found at the bookshop in the London Central mosque in Regent’s Park, which is funded by the Saudi regime and is regularly visited by government ministers. Its director, Ahmad al-Dubayan, is also a Saudi diplomat and was among those greeting King Abdullah when he arrived in Britain last night for his official state visit.
Extremist literature, including passages supporting the stoning of adulterers and waging violent jihad, was also found on sale at many other mosques regarded as mainstream institutions. [...]
A key theme of the books was a “strident sectarianism” which told Muslims that they should remain separate from other faiths and resist integration. The report stated: “Simply put, these notions demand that the individual Muslim must not merely feel deep affection for and identity with his fellow believers and with all that is authentically Islamic. The individual Muslim must also feel an abhorrence for nonbelievers, hypocrites, heretics, and all that is deemed ‘unIslamic’. The latter category encompasses those Muslims who are judged to practise an insufficiently rigorous form of Islam.” Most books stopped short of calling for violence. But they created a climate of intolerance and contempt for nonMuslims that could be exploited by violent jihadists, the researchers said.
Many of the hate books were in English.
Rather amusingly, the Mosques' spokesmen use the free speech defense.
Inayat Bunglawala, the MCB assistant secretary-general, said: “Bookshops sell a variety of publications and we live in an open, democratic society where it is not illegal to sell books which contain antiWestern views.”
It could be interesting to ask if books containing certain Danish cartoons would also be sold there, or perhaps a book like Ibn Warraq's Why I Am Not a Muslim. And if not, why would they exclude those publications while still including books that promote violence against non-Muslims or the stoning of adulterers?
7:17:42 PM
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Christian apologist Theodore Dalrymple is supposedly a very intelligent man, and I believe that to actually be the case, but his latest screed against the so-called new atheism is remarkably low on reasoned arguments and correspondingly high on invective. His only argument for theism appears to be that religion, though it may be false, is good for us, so eat your spinach. And the poster argument is one from history:
The thinness of the new atheism is evident in its approach to our civilization, which until recently was religious to its core. To regret religion is, in fact, to regret our civilization and its monuments, its achievements, and its legacy.
One could make precisely the same argument by saying: to regret slavery is to regret civilization and its monuments. That would obviously be a monstrous statement, but it is as true as Dalrymple's argument above. Not only religion, but the institution of slavery was the economic principle of the classical world, where so much of our civilisation's foundation was laid. Its very monuments were made by forced labour.
Yet, it is possible to admire the writings of Sophocles or Virgil without having anything positive to say about slavery, the economic institutions allowing these men to spend their time writing. I would also say it is possible to marvel at the pyramids in Egypt or the classical wonders in Athens or Rome without being a supporter of slavery.
The present is what it is because of many institutions and ideas of the past that we would find morally abhorrent. Giving us the choice between rejecting ourselves and defending every action of our predecessors presents a false moral dilemma that should be rejected as a rather desperate defense of irrational faith.
7:12:54 AM
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© Copyright 2007 Jan Haugland.
Last update: 02.11.2007; 20:19:23.
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