Stardate 20040212.0956

(Captain's log): Arabs are criticizing an Arabic satellite channel produced by the US. It is intended to provide more balance in news coverage. But even some who don't condemn it think it's the wrong approach:

But Dahroug added that Washington's image won't improve among Arabs until it changes its policies toward them.

Hey, you dumb Yanks! Appeasement, OK? That's how you make us friendly. It's all your fault, so you do all the changing and sacrificing!

I don't suppose it matters that all this criticism is raining down on that satellite channel before it even begins to broadcast.

There's been a proposal to the Arab League to create an "Arab Union" which would be patterned after the European Union. After all, the EU has been so incredibly successful; obviously it's worthy of imitation.

They're also upset about the fact that Bush is proposing a program to bring about broad reform in their part of the world, and he didn't consult with them before doing so.

Um, yeah. See, the idea was to not give them any warning, because they would do everything they could to make it fail.

The Arab League is unhappy with American plans for Iraq. They're afraid that Kurds and Shiites and other despicable minorities elsewhere in the Arab world may get feisty as a result.

The Arabs condemn the Israeli "Wall". The Saudis are going to build their own wall along the border with Yemen, "aimed at curbing the flow of militants and weapons". That argument sounds awfully familiar. But since it's a screen rather than a wall it is obviously entirely different. (Also note that it is logically impossible for "freedom fighters" to be "terrorists". And in Saudi Arabia, the sun rises in the west, and water flows uphill.)

Arafat's wife, who lives in Paris, is being investigated for money laundering. She blames the Israelis.

North Korea still claims that it has made a dramatic and utterly fair proposal: NK would temporarily halt its nuclear development program, and in exchange the US would resume shipping massive amounts of free petroleum to NK, lift all economic sanctions, remove NK from its list of nations which sponsor terrorism, and not try to confirm that NK actually had halted nuclear development. NK also denies any collaboration with the Pakistani nuclear underground. It's all an American lie.

Muhammad al-Baradai warns that the world is perilously close to nuclear destruction. Even worse, al-Baradai's UN agency is perilously close to being terminated after recent revelations which have shown how utterly useless it has been at preventing nuclear proliferation, its avowed mission.

An American defense lawyer in a high profile murder case wants to exclude data collected with the GPS system, claiming that GPS is inaccurate.

Harvard has approved a student magazine about sex, which will include photographs of Harvard undergrads in (cough) undressed state.

The students proposing the magazine, Katharina C. Baldegg and Camilla H. Hrdy, have unlisted phone numbers and e-mail addresses, and could not be reached for comment by The Associated Press.

Naturally not. Those are clearly assumed names.

But one wonders if Harvard's 14-person board would have been as sympathetic to this proposal if the students making the proposal had been male. (And one wonders if "Katharina C. Baldegg" and "Camilla H. Hrdy" are assumed names taken by males, for exactly that reason.)

Barbie and Ken are breaking up. (Rumor is she's seeing GI Joe.)