November 26, 2004

It is really about freedom, not oil: The regime of Saddam Hussein was torture chamber. While weapons of mass destruction have not yet been found, graves of over 300,000 people have been, many machined gunned to death in ways reminiscent of the Einsatzgruppen on the Eastern Front in World War II. Can there be any real doubt that if such a regime could do such things to its own citizens, it would comprise a grave threat to the world should it have acquired the arsenal Saddam was seeking? What is clear beyond dispute is that Saddam’s dictatorship is over. No longer with the vast oil reserves under the ground in Iraq be available to the Baath Party and its visions of dominating the region, threatening Israel, blackmailing the world economy through influence over oil supplies and possibly attacking the United States either alone or in association with radical Islamists. The possibility now exists for the first time of establishing a liberal democracy in the Middle East and to overcome its backwardness not only in relation to Europe and the United States but to democracies in Asia and Latin America. The successful democratization of Iraq is a goal which I hope Europeans share with the United States. German journalists, lawyers, scholars and policy makers could draw on Germany’s experience dealing with the Nazi past after 1945 and the Communist regime after 1989 to help the Iraqis tell the truth about the Baath era. Kanan Mikaya is now in Iraq and directs the Iraqi Memory Foundation. While disagreements about the Iraq war will continue, I hope people in this country will draw on its experience with Vergangenheitsbewältigung of the two German dictatorships to liberal democratic government in Bagdad, restoration of the rule of law, emergence of a vital civil society in Iraq and public revelation in trials, oral histories, journalism and historical scholarship of the truth about the past regime’s crimes.  3:51:42 PM

An attorney for Scott Ritter confirmed that the outspoken former U.N. weapons inspector, who says President Bush should be impeached for his Iraq policy, was arrested a year and a half ago. The arrest record shows he was charged with soliciting an underage girl on the Internet. Now why he ignored the child prision he saw in Iraq. 2:42:59 PM

Proud Lyncher with Blood-Soaked Hands Jailed For Life The man whose savagery in the October, 2000 Ramallah lynching of two IDF soldiers was broadcast worldwide has finally been brought to justice. An Israeli military court handed a life-sentence this week to the man who proudly displayed his blood-drenched hands after he joined a lynch-mob of other Arabs and carried out the grisly double murder. Vadim Norzitch and Yosef Avrahami were the two reserve soldiers killed in the lynching at a Ramallah police station in 2000. 2:33:31 PM

It seems that the Islamic Development Bank is using the UN to route dollars to known terrorist group Hamas. Since the outbreak of the Palestinian intifada in 2000, UNRWA has received $510,000 from the Islamic American Relief Agency, a charity created by the Islamic African Relief Agency (IARA). In October 2004, the US Treasury found that IARA had transferred millions of dollars to terrorist networks run by Osama bin Laden, and has since frozen IARA's assets. 9:25:26 AM

CTV Jackson accusers could face tests BBC News - Michael Jackson's lawyers want his accuser and his family to undergo psychological tests ahead of his child abuse trial, due to begin in January. The first test was: Did they leave their kids with Michael Jackson?  They failed. 9:04:55 AM

(UK) Government department wiped out by IT upgrade disaster Techworld.com - The Department of Work and Pensions (DWP) has suffered what has been described as the biggest computer crash in government history after a software upgrade. The government department lost 80 per cent of its 100,000 PCs following a "routine software upgrade", a DWP spokeswoman confirmed today. The problem lasted all of yesterday but the "majority of our system is up and running now", she said. Microsoft and EDS run the DWP's network as part of a £2 billion IT contract. Microsoft issued a short statement on Friday saying that it worked closely with its partners to help rectify the situation and support the DWP, but declined any further comment. Representatives from EDS have so far failed to comment. 9:01:36 AM

MPs draw a bead on those nasty fats Toronto Star - Does the state have a place in the kitchens of the nation? Members of Parliament have voted to follow the lead of Denmark and make Canada the second country in the world to ban trans fatty acids, widely considered to be the nastiest form of fat. 8:58:32 AM