February 4, 2005

'Mobile' Napster challenges Apple p2pnet.net - When Roxio acquired the Napster name, it was assured of one thing - whether or not the reconstituted corpse did anything significant, it would be guaranteed to generate endless empty headlines. 10:02:30 AM

Inquiry blasts oil-for-food program Globe and Mail, Canada - The executive director of the United Nations oil-for-food program in Iraq secretly lobbied Saddam Hussein's government on behalf of a small oil company, putting himself in a serious conflict of interest and jeopardizing the integrity of the UN itself, an investigation has concluded. In an interim report issued yesterday, the committee investigating allegations of corruption stated that Benon Sevan, the UN's director of the program, repeatedly solicited Iraqi government officials on behalf of African Middle East Petroleum, and won oil-export rights worth $1.5-million (U.S.) for the company, which was owned by a cousin of former UN secretary-general Boutros Boutros-Ghali. 10:01:11 AM

Iraqi citizens Kill 5 terrorists Citizens of Al Mudiryiah were subjected to an attack by several militants today who were trying to punish the residents of this small town for voting in the election last Sunday. The citizens responded and managed to stop the attack, kill 5 of the attackers, wounded 8 and burned their cars. MARK WILLACY: It would appear that people are getting sick of the insurgency. I understand, though, that this is the first report of Iraqis confronting insurgents and actually fighting back in such a way. But certainly many people here see the insurgency as the work of foreigners who want to turn their country into some sort of Islamic state, like Afghanistan under the Talbian. And a couple of days ago we spoke to some voters in central Baghdad and every one of them basically said that they'd like the insurgents to stop their bombing and shooting attacks. Some even said they'd voted just to send a message to the insurgents that they would not be frightened any more. 9:15:12 AM

With all the talk about Ward Churchill, I hope we will not lose track of what is really important? Did the US really kill 500,000 iraqi children? I doubt it, and my report explains why. 8:45:27 AM