Month: May 2002

Climate chief defends independence. The new head of the world panel assessing climate change rejects
charges that he is pro-oil industry. [BBC News: sci/tech]

bq. He defends the Kyoto Protocol – designed to reduced human influence on the global climate – as being better than nothing, and says the panel’s job is to provide compelling evidence for the need for countries to make new commitments to fight global warming.

I don’t care if someone is pro-oil industry or not. I do think it would be an improvement if a scientist who is not anti-human had the post, but I do not think that is likely.

FBI ignored Bin Laden memo. The US FBI failed to act upon a memorandum specifically naming Osama
Bin Laden, according to a newspaper report. [BBC News: world]

It’s not suprising, since the FBI fails to act on reports all the time. When the report doesn’t contain any details, there’s no way to act. The only thing that would have had a chance of helping is if the government had repealed their rules against passengers carrying pistols, and that’s not under the FBI’s control anyway.

Afghanistan Claims Progress on Drugs. Equating anti-drug and anti-terrorism efforts, Afghanistan’s interim government claimed Tuesday it had destroyed 25 percent of three provinces’ opium crop and confiscated enough opium from merchants to keep $8 million in heroin from the market. [AP World News]

Or in other words, 25% of the farmers in those provinces will be unable to provide for their families, who will be left to starve, and some number of merchants in a country with very little economy left are now ruined. I hope that the US government and their Afghan puppets are really proud of themselves.

Hatred grows best when it remains unchallenged. Here is a story which was published and followed-up by yourish.com (link noticed thanks to protein wisdom): A message from… [The news, Uncensored.]

An account of a “peace in the Middle East” rally that was met with a huge mob screaming for the deaths of Jews. Apparently this sort of hatred is common at San Francisco State University. I was surprised, but I suppose I shouldn’t have been–the Bay Area of California is more heavily polluted with European ideology than almost any other part of America.

To the students who were threatened by this mob, I point out that you are not in Europe. You have options in this country–and as various Korean shopkeepers have shown, a dozen people with semiautomatic pistols who know how to use them can stand up to a much larger mob, if they need to. Of course it’s illegal for peasants to actually carry the tools to defend themselves here in the People’s Republic of California, but doing so is only a misdemeaner.

Arafat Promises to Hold Elections. Yasser Arafat, who is under growing pressure at home and abroad to carry out reforms, acknowledged Wednesday that he has made mistakes and promised to restructure his government and hold elections. Yet he did not present a detailed plan and instead appealed for patience. [AP World News]

Who does he think he’s kidding? If he even bothers to have elections at all, he’ll just follow the Zimbabwe model.

Here’s Johnnie. The New Yorker –

Here’s Johnnie – Johnnie Thomas, a seventy-year-old
African-American woman, is on the FBI’s “no-fly” list because “John
Thomas Christopher was one of the aliases used by Christian Michael
Longo, who had been arrested on January 13th at a beach camp in the
Yucatan and charged with murdering his wife and three children”. She
gets treated differently each time she flies. All of it no
fun. [smith2004] [End the War on Freedom]

Gee, I’m so glad we have the FBI to protect us from grandmothers who have names similar to the aliases of murderers who are already in prison.

Nasa hunts net for shuttle parts. US space officials are searching the internet for the outmoded
computer components needed to keep the space shuttles running. [BBC News: sci/tech]

I wonder why NASA doesn’t simply upgrade the computer systems? Perhaps the shuttles are so badly designed that they can’t be upgraded?

Goodbye stars, hello stripes: The new symbol of the EU. Paul Waugh and Robert Booth at The Independent –

Goodbye stars, hello stripes: The new symbol of the EU –

The European Union gets a barcode for a flag. Bizarre. [samizdata {lew}] [End the War on Freedom]

It’s not clear from the article if this new flag will really be adopted or not, but it certainly does look like a barcode. That’s actually quite appropriate, though–it wouldn’t surprise me at all if the EU was requiring people to have barcode tattoos in the near future.

Call for permanent Jenin presence. The disbanded UN fact-finding mission to Jenin calls for an
international presence in Palestinian refugee camps. [BBC News: world]

There already is an international presence. The UN funds and adminsters them (thus ensuring that terrorists are well fed and housed), and the Red Crescent takes care of their medical needs (and also the need for covert transportation of explosives).

Israeli Troops Attack Hamas Hideout. Israeli troops swooped down on a Hamas hide-out in the West Bank’s largest city Friday, while Orthodox Christians in biblical Bethlehem marked a somber Good Friday with no sign of a break in the siege of the Church of the Nativity, now entering its second month. [AP World News]

This article from the US media does mention that Israeli casualty. Still no mention that I’ve seen in the BBC, though.