1. august 2003

Quote of the day "The nation of Dubai banned the movie Charlie's Angels because it's 'offensive to the religion of Islam.' Apparently, the religion of Islam is offended by anything without a plot." --Jon Stewart I stole this from Heretical Ideas (I feel a kinship to a blog with such a name!) 8:57:09 AM    comment []

Red Norway I have often made comments here about the far left stranglehold over Norwegian media, and had intended to get around to writing about the background for journalists here being radically more left-leaning than the population at large.  A notable number of people in important positions, especially in the media, have a background in the communist movement, which were praising Stalin, Pol Pot and Mao while commmunists committed massive genocides. Fellow Norwegian blogger Bjørn Stærk has written a very good overview of this sad story, and the current ongoing debate about it in Norway. You should not miss this if you want to know the background to some of my comments. 7:58:06 AM    comment []

UNICEF's scare-mongering When I first read the newspaper stories about UNICEF's recent report about "child trafficking" I had serious doubts. The numbers reported were sensationalistic, the definition of "trafficking" seemed to include a lot of very common and not-so-sinister practices, and there was an unfortunate mingling of crazy rumours about organ trafficking with genuine concerns over sexual exploitation. Moreover, singular bizarre events, like the boy's torso found in the Thames, were extrapolated to large-scale problems with no supporting evidence, all apparently designed to get headlines not to deal with a serious problem in a responsible way. So I filed it away for a bit of research to get back to it later. It appears Brendan O'Neill at Spiked has saved me the trouble. Recommended reading! 1:56:41 AM    comment []

© Copyright 2003 Jan Haugland. Last update: 01.09.2003; 18:21:44.