Hrmf, okay, I'll link to an election piece, but I'll only do it this once! Matt Welch writes: "Campaigns are not the best places to seek out public confessions of self-doubt, but the certitude on display in this race has long since crossed the threshold from confidence to delusion, and whoever is elected on Tuesday (or whenever it ends) will soon be smacked in the face with the cold hard truth."

Shannon Love at Chicago Boyz and Obsidian Order looks at some methodological weaknesses in the study which claims 100 000 Iraqi victims of the war.

I've made name & e-mail obligatory fields for comments. Too many people were forgetting to fill in a name. Unfortunately there's no way to require just the name and not the e-mail, or I would have done so.

Dagbladet headline of the day: Wounded mistaken for Norwegians. "Icelanders wounded in Kabul suicide attack. .. The confusion probably arose because the Icelandic soldiers had borrowed Norwegian uniforms." No word yet on whether any of the Norwegian uniforms could be salvaged, or on what the government will do to ensure the safety of Norwegian uniforms in the future.

Ken Layne is right - the clip of Jon Stewart on CNN Crossball has to be seen. Watch at IFilm, or download with Bit Torrent (first install torrent client.)

Yes, Le Monde printed an editorial called "We are all Americans" after 9/11, but did they really mean it?

According to Italian intelligence, Ansar al-Islam may have recruited people in Norway to fight in Iraq. (Via document.no). VG writes:

Oh God. Crooked Timber provides scans from Troubled Waters, a comic book from the European Parliament. It combines "a watered-down and slightly incoherent version of the comic book political thriller (evil chemical companies conspire to pollute the water supply and blacken each others’ names), with the legislative minutiae of co-decision, conciliation and voting in plenary."

Who would have thought: TellHim.no managed to buy an anti-war ad in the Washington Post after all. Signed "Concerned citizens and organizations of Norway", it calls for financial compensation to Iraqi war victims, an apology to Iraq and America's allies, democracy, UN involvement, and a vaguish end to a policy which "only fosters resistance".

In full:

Norwegian newspapers published income tax records for 2003 on their websites today, along with stories about top earners. It's all about fighting corruption, exposing bloodsuckers and protecting our God-given right to stick our nose in other people's business. Though searching is more restricted than earlier years, almost everything I said last year still applies.

Here's what the Duelfer report actually says about Saddam Hussein and his WMD intentions. From the key findings:

The Nobel Peace Prize this year goes to Wangari Mathaai, a Kenyan environmentalist. Keywords, "peace on earth", "ecological viability" and "holistic approach":

As you can see I've added a few feeds from other blogs to the right. Those of you who run with 800x600 resolution won't see them without scrolling. Currently up: document.no, a Norwegian group blog, Jan Haugland's Secular Blasphemy, another Norwegian, Leif Knutsen, a Norwegian-American who used to write Tenk Selv with Lars Ruben Hirsch, and the Stockholm Spectator blog.

Akhtar Chaudry, Socialist Left: Norwegian Muslims must protect Norway.

Katherine at Obsidian Wings has a series of posts up about extraordinary rendition, attempts to make it legal in the US, and specific cases where it has been used to interrogate suspects. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12.

Aftenposten - where optimism meets delusion. "Two years ago the Dixie Chicks received death threats after speaking up against president George W. Bush. Now rock stars are lining up to remove Bush from the White House."

I've made a few changes. I've upgraded Movable Type, installed an anti-spam filter, and added a search engine (in the side bar on the left). I've also imported all the old Blogger entries from 2001-2002. The archive links are unchanged, but this means that all this blog's content can now be searched. Update: And now you can comment on quick link entries.

FFI researcher Brynjar Lia believes that Carl I. Hagen's Islam criticism may have put Norway in the focus of Islamists. Really? Then how about blaming the media that misquoted Hagen instead?

Al-Zawahiri lists Norway as terror target, along with the US, Great Britain, France, Italy Australia, France, Japan, South Korea and Poland.

I've made a page that collects everything I've written about Ester Kristoffer and NRK in one place. I know there are reporters reading this. I've done all the hard work for you. You now have no excuse not to cover this.